THE  LIBRARY 

OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


•s 


J  - " 

f 


PEN  AND  INK 


'Books  by  Grander  CMattbews : 

ESSAYS  AND  CRITICISMS 
French  Dramatists  of  the  igth  Century 
Pen  and  Ink,  Essays  on  subjects  of  more 

or  less  importance 
Aspects  of  Fiction,  and  other  Essays 
The  Historical  Novel,  and  other  Essays 
Parts  of  Speech,  Essays  on  English 
The   Development   of  the   Drama  (in 
preparation) 


PEN  AND  INK 

PAPERS  ON  SUBJECTS  OF  MORE  OR  LESS 
IMPORTANCE 


BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

THIRD   EDITION 
REVISED  AND   ENLARGED 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1902 


Copyright,  1888,  1902, 
BY  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 

Published  February,  1902. 


THE  CAXTON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK. 


PS 
.237.2 


If  02 


PEN  Aim  INK. 

Ye  wanderers  that  were  my  sires, 

Who  read  men' s  fortunes  in  the  handt 
Who  -voyaged  with  your  smithy  fires 

From  waste  to  waste  across  the  land, 
Why  did  you  leave  for  garth  and  town 

Your  life  by  heath  and  river's  brink  ? 
Why  lay  your  Gipsy  freedom  down 

And  doom  your  child  to  Pen  and  Ink  ? 

You  wearied  of  the  wild-wood  meal 

That  crowned,  or  failed  to  crown,  the  day, 
Too  honest  or  too  tame  to  steal, 

You  broke  into  the  beaten  way: 
Wied  loom  or  awl  like  other  men 

t/Jnd  learned  to  love  the  guinea's  chink. 
Oh,  recreant  sires,  who  doomed  me  then 

To  earn  so  few — with  Pen  and  Ink! 

Where  it  hath  fallen  the  tree  must  lie. 

'Tis  over-late  for  ME  to  roam. 
Yet  the  caged  bird  who  hears  the  cry 

Of  his  wild  fellows  fleeting  home 


1966920 


<Mayfeel  no  sharper  pang  than  mine, 
Who  seem  to  hear,  "whene'er  I  think, 

Spate  in  the  stream  and  wind  in  pine 
Call  me  to  quit  dull  Pen  and  Ink. 

For  then  the  Spirit  wandering, 

That  sleeps  within  the  blood,  awakes; 
For  then  the  summer  and  the  spring 

I  fain  would  meet  by  streams  and  lakes. 
But  ah,  my  birtlrright  long  is  sold, 

T^ut  custom  chains  me,  link  on  link, 
<And  I  must  get  me,  as  of  old, 

'Back  to  my  tools,  to  Pen  and  Ink. 

A.  LANG. 


PAGE 
'"Pen  and  Ink,"  by  A.  Lang     .    .    .     xiii 

I  On  the  Antiquity  of  Jests I 

II  The  Ethics  of  'Plagiarism 23 

III  The  True  Theory  of  the  Preface  ...  53 

IV  The  Philosophy  of  the  Short-story  .     .  73 

V  A  &£ote  on  the  Essay 107 

VI  Two  Latter-day  Lyrists 119 

I    Frederick  Locker 
II     Austin  Dobson 

VII     The  Songs  of  the  Civil  War    .    .    .     .167 
VIII    On  the  French  spoken  by  those  who  do 

not  speak  French 197 

IX     The  Tiramati^ation  of  U^avels     .     .     .219 
X     The  Whole  T)uty  of  Critics  .    .    .    .253 
"An  Epistle  to  the  Author,"  by  H.  C. 
TSunner 275 


I 
ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS 


ON  THE  ANTIQyiTY  OF  JESTS. 


HERE  are  not  a  few  very  interesting 
and  instructive  books  waiting  to  be 
written.  Two  goodly  tomes  there 
are,  for  example,  which  I  am  anx 
ious  to  own, — the  'Anecdote  His 
tory  of  Private  Theatricals/  and  'A  Historical 
Treatise  on  Scene-Painting  and  Stage-Mechanism.' 
Unfortunately  nobody  has  yet  thought  it  worth 
his  while  to  write  either  of  them,  though  it  would 
be  difficult  to  find  anywhere  two  books  about  the 
stage  more  entertaining,  more  useful,  and  easier 
to  put  together.  But  a  book  which  I  would 
receive  with  more  welcome  and  review  more 
willingly  even  than  these  is  the  '  Authentic  Jest- 
Book,  chronologically  arranged,  with  exact  refer 
ences  to  the  original  authorities  and  a  collation  of 
the  parallel  passages  in  other  authors/  It  may  be 
thought  that  of  jest-books  we  have  a  many,  and 
that,  at  best,  they  are  but  dreary  reading.  And 
so  it  is.  But  the  '  Authentic  Jest-Book '  is  wholly 
unlike  any  other  collection  of  jokes  and  gibes  and 


2  PEN  AND  INK. 

repartees  and  witticisms ;  it  is  unlike  them  all, 
and  better  than  any  of  them.  In  the  ordinary 
gathering  of  merry  jests,  whether  it  be  the  collec 
tion  of  Hierocles,  the  Greek,  or  of  Abou-na-wass, 
the  Persian,  whether  it  be  the  '  Moyen  de  Par- 
venir,'  the  compilation  of  some  contemporary  of 
Rabelais,  or  the  '  Gesta  Romanorum  '  growing 
together  in  monkish  hands,  whether  it  be  the 
humorous  anthology  of  the  worthy  Poggio  or  that 
credited  to  the  unworthy  Joseph  Miller,  in  any  and 
all  of  the  recognized  receptacles  of  the  waifs  and 
strays  of  wit  and  humor,  there  is  one  marked, 
permanent,  and  fatal  defect :  the  most  of  the  jokes 
are  unidentified  and  unauthenticated  ;  they  are  set 
down  as  they  were  familiar  in  men's  mouths  at  the 
time  when  Poggio  and  Hierocles  and  the  double 
of  Joseph  Miller  and  their  fellows  went  about  tak 
ing  notes.  In  other  words,  no  effort  has  been 
made  hitherto  to  show  the  genesis  of  jests,  and 
to  declare  with  precision  and  with  authority  just 
when  a  given  joke  was  first  made  and  just  what 
transformations  and  adventures  it  has  since  under 
gone. 

The  jest-book  I  want  is  one  giving  chapter  and 
verse  for  every  laugh  in  it.  In  '  L'Esprit  dans 
1'Histoire'  and  in  'L'Esprit  des  Autres,'  Edouard 
Fournier  made  an  attempt  along  the  right  path ; 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  y 

and  he  was  followed  aptly  and  promptly  by 
Mr.  Hayward  in  the  essay  on  the  'Pearls  and 
Mock-Pearls  of  History.'  Fournier  and  Hayward 
succeeded  in  showing  that  many  an  accepted  witti 
cism  is  a  very  Proteus,  reappearing  again  and  again 
with  a  change  of  face.  Other  jokes  are,  like  Cagli- 
ostro,  turning  up  once  in  a  century  quite  as 
young  as  ever.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  story  told 
by  Lord  Stair,  called  the  politest  man  in  France 
—  because  he  obeyed  the  king's  request  and 
jumped  into  the  royal  carriage  before  his  majesty. 
Lord  Stair  bore  a  singular  resemblance  to  Louis 
XIV.,  who  was  moved  to  ask  him  if  Lord  Stair's 
mother  had  ever  been  to  Paris ;  to  which  Lord 
Stair  replied,  "No,  your  majesty,  but.  my  father 
has."  The  same  story  is  told  of  Henri  IV.  and  a 
certain  gentleman  of  Gascony.  It  can  be  found  in 
Macrobius,  where  it  is  related  of  a  general  who 
came  from  Spain  to  the  court  of  the  Caesars. 
Now,  in  the  'Authentic  Jest-Book,'  this  anecdote 
would  reappear  in  an  English  translation  of  the 
exact  words  of  Macrobius,  with  a  note  setting 
forth  the  revival  of  the  retort  under  Henri  IV.  and 
Louis  XIV. :  no  doubt  it  has  been  told  of  many 
another  monarch  who  was  the  father  of  his  people 
in  the  fashion  of  the  roi  vert-galant.  Moore,  as 
in  duty  bound,  sets  down  Sheridan's  light-hearted 


4  PEN  AND  INK. 

jest  while  he  watched  the  burning  of  Drury  Lane 
Theatre  from  the  coffee-house  where  he  was  sip 
ping  a  glass  of  sherry — "  Surely  a  man  may  take 
a  glass  of  wine  at  his  own  fireside  ! "  This  is  a 
saying  quite  worthy  of  Sheridan,  and  one  which 
he  was  quite  capable  of  making  ;  but  Moore,  with 
a  wise  scepticism,  suggested  that  it  "may  have 
been,  for  aught  I  know,  like  the  Wandering  Jew, 
a  regular  attendant  upon  all  fires  since  the  time  of 
Hierocles." 

There  is,  indeed,  a  metempsychosis  of  profes 
sional  jokes.  A  merry  jest  about  a  preacher  or 
a  player  or  a  physician  is  reincarnated  in  every 
generation.  It  is  like  royalty,  it  never  dies — Le 
roi  est  mort!  Vive  le  roil  Garrick's  death  eclipses 
the  gayety  of  nations,  but  the  stroke  of, humor 
which  told  for  or  against  Garrick  soon  tells  for  or 
against  Grimaldi.  By  a  sort  of  apostolic  succes 
sion,  the  anecdotes  about  a  popular  clergyman  pass 
to  the  clergyman  who  succeeds  him  in  popularity. 
Two  of  these  perennial  tales — one  about  a  player, 
and  the  other  about  a  preacher — have  had  an  excep 
tionally  strong  hold  on  life.  In  the  first  a  severe 
hypochondriac  consults  a  physician,  who  advises 
recreation  :  "  You  should  see  Listen  !  "  "  I  am 
Listen  ! "  answers  the  severe  hypochondriac.  This 
is  told  of  Grimaldi  and  of  many  another  comic 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  5 

performer  before  and  since  his  time.  The  earliest 
instance  I  have  been  able  to  find  is  in  connec 
tion  with  Dominique,  the  famous  arlequin  of  the 
Comedie-Italienne  under  Louis  XIV.  Arlequin 
Dominique  was  ready  of  speech,  as  an  anecdote 
proves  which  has  yet  only  one  hero  :  the  monarch 
was  fond  of  the  mimic,  and  seeing  him  thirsty  one 
day,  bade  a  servant  give  him  a  goblet  filled  to  the 
brim.  Now  the  goblet  was  of  gold,  so  Arlequin 
slyly  queried,  "  And  the  wine,  too,  your  majesty  ?" 
But  this  is  a  digression. 

The  second  story  relates  to  a  certain  popular 
preacher,  who  on  a  sultry  summer  morning  arose 
in  his  pulpit  and  wiped  his  forehead  and  said,  "  It 
is  damned  hot ! "  And  when  the  congregation 
were  properly  shocked  into  wakefulness,  he  said, 
"Such  were  the  words  which  met  my  ears  this 
morning  as  I  entered  this  house  of  worship  ! "  and 
then  he  proceeded  to  preach  a  vigorous  sermon 
against  the  sin  of  profanity.  In  the  article  which 
an  important  London  weekly  devoted  to  the  cele 
bration  of  Mr.  Spurgeon's  fifty  years  of  ministry, 
this  saying  and  this  sermon  were  placed  in  the 
mouth  of  Mr.  Spurgeon.  In  the  United  States 
Mr.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  generally  supposed 
to  have  said  them — there  are  not  wanting  those 
who  declare  that  they  heard  him — in  spite  of  the 


6  PEN  AND  INK. 

eloquent  protests  and  denial  of  his  sister,  Mrs. 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe.  But  Rowland  Hill  pre 
ceded  both  Mr.  Beecher  and  Mr.  Spurgeon  as  the 
protagonist  of  this  little  sacred  play  ;  and  Robert 
Hall  had  appeared  in  the  part  before  Rowland  Hill. 
Who  the  real  originator  may  be  will  not  be  known 
with  certainty  until  the  '  Authentic  Jest-Book ' 
appears. 

One  class  of  anecdote  should  be  excluded  scru 
pulously  from  my  model  collection.  It  is  the 
anecdote  unvouched  for  by  a  recognizable  proper 
name  as  one  of  the  dramatis  persona.  It  is  the 
anecdote  which  relates  us  the  faits  et  gestes  of  "  a 
certain  Oxford  scholar"  or  "  a  well-known  wit" 
or  "  a  foolish  fellow."  These  anonymous  tales  are 
as  unworthy  of  credence  as  an  anonymous  letter. 
A  merry  jest  ought  always  to  be  accompanied  by 
the  name  of  the  hero,  necessarily  for  publication 
and  as  a  guarantee  of  good  faith.  When  the  tale 
is  tagged  to  a  man  whose  name  we  know,  investi 
gation  is  possible  and  we  may  get  at  the  truth. 
But  these  nameless  stories  are  of  no  country  and 
of  no  century — rather  are  they  of  all  nations  and 
of  all  times.  It  has  been  well  said  that  Irish  bulls 
were  calves  in  Greece.  There  is  a  familiar  Irish 
anecdote,  not  to  be  told  here,  though  innocent 
enough,  which  turns  on  the  continuance  of  the 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  7 

pattering  of  the  rain-drops.  This  was  confided 
to  me  a  few  years  ago  in  America  as  the  latest 
importation  from  the  Emerald  Isle.  A  year  later, 
I  read  it  in  one  of  the  ten  volumes  of  the  '  His- 
toriettes'  of  Tallemant  des  Reaux,  who  flourished 
in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The 
next  summer,  I  happened  to  choose  for  my  light 
reading  '  Le  Moyen  de  Parvenir,'  attributed  by 
most  to  Beroalde  de  Varville,  although  it  may  pos 
sibly  be,  in  part  at  least,  the  work  of  Rabelais ; 
and  in  this  collection,  put  together  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  again  I  found  my  Irish  story, — Gascon, 
this  time,  I  think ;  certainly  no  longer  Hibernian. 
It  is  characteristic  of  the  transmigration  of  tales, 
that  the  story  which  we  find  first  in  the  '  Moyen 
de  Parvenir/  avowedly  a  work  of  fiction,  reappears 
a  hundred  years  later  in  the  Memoirs  of  Tallemant 
as  a  fact.  It  is  a  wise  anecdote  that  knows  its 
own  father. 

To  another  French  collection,  the  '  Contes  du 
Sieur  Galliard,'  by  Tabourot  des  Accords,  Mr. 
Richard  Grant  White  has  traced  one  of  the  most 
amusing  stanzas  of '  Yankee  Doodle ' — 

Yankee  Doodle  came  to  town 
And  wore  his  striped  trowsis ; 

Said  he  couldn't  see  the  town, 
There  were  so  many  houses. 


8  PEN  AND  INK. 

The  French  ancestor  is:  "  Chascun  me  disoit 
que  je  verrois  une  si  grande  et  belle  ville ;  mais 
on  se  mocquoit  de  moi ;  car  on  ne  le  peut  voir  a 
cause  de  la  multitude  des  maisons  qui  empechent 
la  veue."  And  I  think  there  is  an  even  older 
English  saying  to  the  effect  that  one  could  not  see 
the  forest  for  the  trees. 

There  is  no  need  here  to  enter  on  the  vexed 
question  of  plagiarism,  though  it  is  very  tempt 
ing  at  all  times.  One  chapter  of  the  '  History  of 
Plagiarism  ' — another  of  the  interesting  books 
waiting  to  be  written — must  contain  many  facts 
of  interest  tending  to  show  the  survival  of  humor. 
Almost  the  oldest  literary  monument  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  French  comedy  is  the  '  Farce  de  Maitre 
Pierre  Pathelin ' ;  it  is  as  primitive  and  as  positive 
in  its  humor  as  a  play  can  be.  An  adaptation  of 
it  under  the  name  of  '  L'Avocat  Pathelin '  was 
made  by  Brueys  and  Palaprat,  in  accordance  with 
the  canons  of  French  dramatic  art  which  obtained 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  From  '  L'Avocat  Pathe 
lin  '  was  taken  an  English  farce,  the  '  Village 
Lawyer/  brought  out  at  Drury  Lane  under  the 
management  of  David  Garrick.  The  '  Village 
Lawyer '  kept  the  stage  for  nearly  a  century,  and 
the  last  time  it  was  acted  in  New-York  Mr.  Joseph 
Jefferson  took  the  chief  part.  A  perversion  of  the 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  9 

'Village  Lawyer,'  under  the  title  of  the  'Great 
Sheep  Case,'  has  been  made  for  the  use  of  the 
ruder  and  more  boisterous  actors  who  perform  in 
the  entertainments  known,  for  some  inscrutable 
reason,  as  Variety  Shows.  Thus  it  happens  that 
one  of  the  earliest  comic  plays  of  France  still  keeps 
the  stage  in  America — as  strong  an  instance  of 
the  tenacity  of  humor  as  one  could  wish. 

When  a  story  is  authenticated  by  a  proper  name 
we  are  inclined  to  treat  it  with  more  respect  than 
when  it  is  a  mere  bastard  with  no  right  to  a 
patronymic.  There  has  recently  been  put  into 
circulation  in  America  an  anecdote  sharpened  to 
the  same  point  as  an  anecdote  recorded  in  the  his 
trionic  biographies  of  the  last  century ;  but  the 
proper  names  which  appear  in  both  versions  lead 
one  to  believe  that  there  has  been  no  wilful  in 
fringement  of  copyright.  Foote  was  forever  gird 
ing  at  Garrick's  parsimony — very  unjustly,  for 
Garrick  was  careful  of  the  pence  only  that  he 
might  have  pounds  to  lend  and  to  give.  Garrick 
dropped  a  guinea  once  and  sought  it  in  vain,  until 
he  gave  up  the  search,  saying  petulantly,  "I  be 
lieve  it  has  gone  to  the  devil ! "  Whereupon 
Foote  remarked  that  Davy  could  make  a  guinea  go 
farther  than  any  one  else.  This  is  the  tale  as  told 
in  the  last  century  in  the  Old  World.  Here  is  the 


I0  PEN  AND  INK. 

tale  as  told  in  the  New  World  in  this  century. 
When  Mr.  William  M.  Evarts  was  Secretary  of 
State  he  went  with  a  party  to  see  the  Natural 
Bridge  in  Virginia,  not  very  far  from  the  capi 
tal.  Somebody  repeated  the  tradition  that  George 
Washington  once  threw  a  silver  dollar  over  the 
bridge — a  very  remarkable  feat  of  strength  and 
skill.  "  In  those  days,"  was  the  comment  of  Mr. 
Evarts,  "in  those  days  a  dollar  went  so  much 
farther  than  it  does  now ! "  Although  the  point 
is  the  same  on  which  the  two  tales  turn,  they 
impress  one  as  of  quite  independent  invention ; 
we  may  doubt  whether  Mr.  Evarts,  who  has  a 
merry  wit  of  his  own,  ever  heard  of  Foote's  gibe. 
When,  however,  the  story  is  not  vouched  for 
by  a  proper  name,  the  probability  is  that  the  suc 
cessive  reappearances  of  an  anecdote  are  due  to  a 
survival  in  oral  tradition.  There  is  in  America  a 
familiar  tale,  summed  up  in  the  phrase  "Let  the 
other  man  walk ! "  It  relates  that  a  traveller  in  a 
hotel  was  kept  awake  long  past  midnight  by  a 
steady  tramp,  tramp,  tramp,  on  the  floor  over 
him.  At  last  he  went  upstairs  and  asked  what 
the  matter  might  be.  The  occupant  of  the  upper 
room  said  that  he  owed  money  to  another  man  for 
which  he  had  given  a  note,  and  the  note  came 
due  on  the  morrow  and  he  could  not  meet  it. 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  1 1 

"Are  you  certain  that  you  cannot  pay  your  debt?" 
asked  the  visitor.  "Alas,  I  cannot,"  replied  the 
debtor.  "Then,"  said  the  visitor,  "if  it  cannot 
be  helped,  lie  down  and  go  to  sleep — and  let  the 
other  man  walk  ! "  Now  this  is  a  mere  Ameri 
canization  of  a  story  of  Poggio's  of  an  inhabitant 
of  Perugia,  who  walked  in  melancholy  because 
he  could  not  pay  his  debts.  "  Vah,  stulte,"  was 
the  advice  given  him,  "  leave  anxiety  to  your 
creditors ! " 

Another  well-worn  American  anecdote  describes 
the  result  of  owning  both  a  parrot  and  a  monkey. 
When  the  owner  of  the  bird  and  the  beast  comes 
home  one  day,  he  finds  the  monkey  decked  with 
red  and  green  feathers,  but  he  does  not  find  the 
parrot  for  a  long  while.  At  last,  the  bird  appears 
from  an  obscure  corner  plucked  bare  save  a  single 
tail-feather;  he  hops  upon  his  perch  with  such 
dignity  as  he  can  muster  and  says,  with  infinite 
pathos,  "  Oh,  we  have  had  a  hell  of  a  time  1"  At 
first  nothing  could  seem  more  American  than 
this,  but  there  is  a  story  essentially  the  same 
in  Walpole's  Letters.  Yet  another  parrot  story 
popular  in  New-York,  where  a  well-known  wit 
happens  to  be  a  notorious  stutterer,  is  as  little 
American  as  this  of  Walpole's.  The  stutterer  is 
supposed  to  ask  the  man  who  offers  the  parrot  for 


13  PEN  AND  INK. 

sale  if  it  oc-c-can  t-t-t-talk.  "  If  it  could  not  talk 
better  than  you  I'd  wring  its  neck,"  is  the  ven 
der's  indignant  answer.  I  found  this  only  the 
other  day  in  Buckland's  '  Curiosities  of  Natural 
History,'  first  published  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  cen 
tury  ago  ;  and  since  this  paper  was  first  published 
a  contributor  to  the  Dramatic  Re-view  has  traced  it 
back  to  Henry  Philips's  '  Recollections.' 

The  two  phrases,  "let  the  other  man  walk" 
and  "we  have  had  a  hell  of  a  time,"  have  passed 
into  proverbs  in  America.  The  anecdotes  in  which 
they  are  enshrined  happened  to  tickle  the  fancy 
of  the  American  people  most  prodigiously.  There 
is  in  them,  as  they  are  now  told  in  the  United 
States,  a  certain  dryness  and  directness  and  sub 
tlety  and  extravagance — four  qualities  character 
istic  of  much  of  the  American  humor  which  is  one 
of  the  most  abundant  of  our  exports.  In  nothing 
is  the  note  of  nationality  more  distinct  than  in 
jokes.  The  delicate  indelicacies  of  M.  Grevin  are 
hardly  more  un-English  than  the  extravagant  vaga 
ries  of  the  wild  humorists  of  the  boundless  prairies 
of  the  West.  In  Hebrew  I  am  informed  and  be 
lieve  the  pun  is  a  legitimate  figure  of  lofty  rhetoric, 
and  in  England  I  have  observed  it  is  the  staple  of 
comic  effort  ;  in  America  most  of  us  are  intolerant 
of  the  machine-made  pun.  To  be  acceptable  to 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  13 

the  American  mind  the  pun  must  have  an  element 
of  unexpected  depravity — like  Dr.  Holmes's  im 
mortal  play  on  a  word  when  he  explains  to  us  that 
an  onion  is  like  an  organ  because  it  smell  odious. 
As  a  rule,  however,  the  native  American  humorist 
eschews  all  mere  juggling  with  double  meanings. 
He  strives  to  attain  an  imaginative  extravagance, 
recalling  rather  Rabelais  than  the  more  decorous 
contributors  to  the  collection  of  Mr.  Punch.  Arte- 
mus  Ward  suggests  quietly  that  it  would  have 
been  money  in  Jeff.  Davis's  pocket  if  he  had  never 
been  born.  Mark  Twain  in  an  answer  to  a  corre 
spondent  recommends  fish  as  a  brain-food,  and 
after  considering  the  contributions  proffered  by  the 
correspondent,  indicates  as  his  proper  diet  two 
whales — not  necessarily  large  whales,  just  ordinary 
ones.  But  one  of  the  best  characters  Mark  Twain 
ever  sketched  from  life,  Colonel  Mulberry  Sellers, 
is  almost  exactly  like  a  character  in  Ben  Jonson's 
'  The  Devil  is  an  Ass/  And  Charles  Lamb  and 
Sydney  Smith  would  have  felt  a  thrill  of  delight  at 
meeting  the  man  who  wanted  to  run  up  to  Rome 
from  Civita  Vecchia  that  he  might  have  '  twenty 
minutes  in  the  Eternal  City.'  Indeed,  if  Mark 
Twain  had  only  been  a  parson,  he  might  have 
written  singularly  like  unto  the  merry  curate  who 
once  lived  five  miles  from  a  lemon.  Perhaps  the 


14  PEN  AND  INK. 

strict  theological  training  would  have  checked  that 
tendency  to  apparent  irreverence  which  leads 
Americans  to  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  equator. 
I  think  this  irreverence  is  more  apparent  than 
actual.  Americans  are  brought  up  on  the  Bible, 
and  they  use  the  familiar  phrases  of  the  authorized 
version  without  intent  of  irreverence.  I  have 
seen  an  Englishman  shocked  at  passages  in  the 
'  Biglow  Papers '  which  an  American  accepted 
without  hesitation  or  thought  of  evil. 

Perhaps  the  most  marked  of  the  four  chief  char 
acteristics  of  contemporary  American  humor — 
dryness,  directness,  subtlety,  and  extravagance  — 
is  a  compound  of  the  two  latter  into  something 
very  closely  resembling  imagination.  An  Ameri 
can  reviewer  of  Mr.  John  Ashton's  '  Humor,  Wit, 
and  Satire  of  the  Seventeenth  Century' — a  most 
useful  work,  by  the  way,  to  whosoever  shall 
undertake  hereafter  the  editing  of  the  '  Authentic 
Jest-Book' — drew  attention  to  the  unlikeness  of 
the  mere  telling  of  an  incident — possibly  comic 
enough  in  its  happening,  but  vapid  and  mirthless 
beyond  measure  when  it  is  set  down  in  cold  print 
— the  unlikeness  of  this  sort  of  comic  tale  to  the 
more  imaginative  anecdotes  now  in  favor  in  Amer 
ican  newspapers.  The  reviewer  copied  from  Mr. 
Ashton's  book  a  comic  tale  taken  from  the  '  Sack- 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  i  5 

ful  of  Newes, '  published  in  1673,  and  set  over 
against  it  a  little  bit  of  the  paragraphic  humor 
which  floats  hither  and  thither  on  the  shifting 
waves  of  American  journalism.  Here  is  the  merry 
jest  of  two  centuries  ago : 

"  A  certain  butcher  was  flaying  a  calf  at  night, 
and  had  stuck  a  lighted  candle  upon  his  head, 
because  he  would  be  the  quicker  about  his  busi 
ness,  and  when  he  had  done  he  thought  to  take 
the  same  candle  to  light  him  to  bed  ;  but  he  had 
forgot  where  he  had  set  it,  and  sought  about  the 
house  for  it,  and  all  the  while  it  stuck  in  his  cap 
upon  his  head  and  lighted  him  in  seeking  it.  At 
the  last  one  of  his  fellows  came  and  asked  him 
what  he  sought  for.  *  Marry  (quoth  he),  I  look 
for  the  candle  which  I  did  flay  the  calf  withal.' 
'  Why,  thou  fool,'  qd.  he,  '  thou  has  a  candle  in 
thy  cap.'  And  then  he  felt  towards  his  cap,  and 
took  away  the  candle  burning,  whereat  there  was 
great  laughing  and  he  mocked  for  his  labor,  as  he 
was  well  worthy." 

And  here  is  the  journalistic  joke  of  our  own  day : 
"  A  colored  individual  who  went  down  on  the 
slippery  flags  at  the  corner  of  Woodward  Avenue 
and  Congress  Street,  scrambled  up  and  backed  out 
into  the  street,  and  took  a  long  look  towards  the 
roof  of  the  nearest  building. 


l6  PEN  AND  INK. 

'  You  fell  from  that  third-story  window ! ' 
remarked  a  pedestrian  who  had  witnessed  the 
tumble. 

'  Boss,  I  believes  yer ! '  was  the  prompt  reply ; 
'  but  what  puzzles  me  am  de  queshun  of  how  I 
got  up  dar,  an'  why  I  was  leanin'  outer  de 
winder ! ' ' 

Of  course  neither  of  these  tales  would  find  a 
place  in  the  'Authentic  Jest-Book,'  for  the  first  is  a 
flat  telling  of  a  flat  fact  and  the  second  is  an  obvi 
ous  invention  of  the  enemy.  But  they  are  valuable 
as  indications  of  the  steady  and  increasing  evolu 
tion  of  humor.  Even  if  the  merry  jest  about  the 
butcher  and  his  candle  had  been  ennobled  by  a 
great  name,  it  would  have  gone  to  the  wall  as  one 
of  the  weakest  jokes  known  to  the  student  of  the 
history  of  humor.  The  doctrine  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for  existence  is  as 
applicable  to  jests  as  it  is  to  other  entities.  A  given 
joke  develops  best  in  a  given  environment — a 
pun,  for  example,  has  more  chance  of  life  in  Eng 
land,  a  bit  of  imaginative  extravagance  in  America, 
and  a  gibe  at  matrimonial  infelicity  or  infidelity  in 
France.  It  would  be  a  great  step  gained  if  we 
could  get  at  the  primordial  germs  of  wit  or  dis 
cover  the  protoplasm  of  humor. 

Certain  jests,  like  certain  myths,  exist  in  variants 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  17 

in  all  parts  of  the  world.  Comparative  mytholo- 
gists  are  diligently  collecting  the  scattered  folk 
lore  of  all  races;  why  should  they  not  also  be 
gathering  together  the  primitive  folk-humor? 
Cannot  some  comparative  philologist  reconstruct 
for  us  the  original  jest-book  of  the  Aryan  people? 
It  would  be  very  interesting  to  know  the  exact 
stock  of  jokes  our  forefathers  took  with  them  in 
their  migrations  from  the  mighty  East.  It  would 
be  most  instructive  to  be  informed  just  how  far 
they  had  got  in  the  theory  and  practice  of  humor. 
It  would  be  a  pure  joy  to  discover  precisely  what 
might  be  the  original  fund  of  root-jests  laughed,  at 
by  Teuton  and  Latin  and  Hindoo  before  these  races 
were  differentiated  one  from  another  by  time  and 
travel  and  climate.  I  wonder  whether  the  pastoral 
Aryan  knew  and  loved  an  early  form  of  Lamb's 
favorite  comic  tale,  the  one  in  which  a  mad  wag 
asks  the  rustic  whether  that  is  his  own  hare  or  a 
wig  ?  And  what  did  the  dark-haired  Iberian  laugh 
at  before  the  tall  blonde  Aryan  drove  him  into  the 
corners  of  Europe  ?  It  was  probably  some  practical 
joke  or  other,  in  which  a  bone  knife  or  a  flint 
arrow-head  played  the  chief  part.  The  records  of 
the  Semitic  race  are  familiar  to  us,  but  we  know 
nothing  or  next  to  nothing  about  the  primitive 
humor  of  the  alleged  Turanians. 


1 8  PEN  AND  INK. 

When  this  good  work  is  well  in  hand,  and  when 
the  collector  of  comic  orts  and  ends  is  prepared  to 
make  his  report,  there  might  be  held  an  Interna 
tional  Exhibition  of  Jokes,  which  would  be  quite 
as  useful  and  quite  as  moral  as  some  of  the  Inter 
national  Exhibitions  we  have  had  of  late  years.  I 
think  I  should  spend  most  of  my  time  in  the  Retro 
spective  Section  studying  the  antique  jests.  "  Old 
as  a  circus  joke"  might  be  a  proverb,  and  the 
Christmas  pantomime  and  the  Christy  Minstrel 
can  supply  jokes  both  practical  and  otherwise, 
quite  as  fatigued  and  as  hoary  with  age  as  those 
of  the  circus.  Among  its  many  advantages  this 
International  Exhibition  of  Jokes  would  have  one 
of  great  importance — it  would  forever  dispel  the 
belief  in  the  saying  of  one  of  old  that  there  were 
only  thirty-eight  good  stories  in  existence,  and 
that  thirty-seven  of  these  could  not  be  told 
before  ladies.  There  might  have  been  some 
foundation  for  this  saying  in  the  days  when  the 
ladies  had  to  leave  the  table  after  dinner  because 
the  conversation  of  the  gentlemen  then  became 
unfit  for  their  ears.  While  a  good  joke  should 
be  like  a  pin,  in  that  it  should  come  to  a  head 
soon  and  be  able  to  stand  on  its  point,  yet  only 
too  many  sorry  jests  are  rather  to  be  defined 
as  unlike  a  mathematical  line,  in  that  they  have 
breadth  as  well  as  length. 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  19 

It  is  perhaps  owing  to  the  existence  of  stories 
of  this  sort  that  woman  has  lost  the  faculty  of 
story-telling.  Of  course,  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
fair  sex  are  not  felicitous  at  fiction  ;  the  Schehera- 
zades  of  the  serials  would  confute  me  at  once.  I 
mean  that  women  do  not  amuse  each  other  by  the 
exchange  of  anecdote  as  men  are  wont  to  do. 
They  do  not  retail  the  latest  good  thing.  They 
chat,  gossip,  giggle,  converse,  talk,  and  amuse 
themselves  easily  together,  but  they  do  not  swop 
stories  in  man-fashion.  Where  man  is  objective, 
woman  is  subjective.  She  is  satisfied  with  her  own 
wit,  without  need  of  colporting  the  humor  of  a 
stranger.  Woman's  wit  has  sex.  It  is  wholly  dif 
ferent  from  man's  wit.  From  Beatrice  (though 
she  was  said  to  take  hers  from  the  'C.  Merry 
Tales')  to  Mrs.  Poyser  (who  gave  us  that  marvel 
lous  definition  of  a  conceited  man  as  one  who  was 
like  the  cock  that  thought  the  sun  rose  to  hear  him 
crow),  the  bright  women  of  fiction  have  been  witty 
rather  than  humorous.  It  may  be  that  the  dis 
tinction  between  wit  and  humor  is  one  of  sex  after 
all.  I  have  a  friend — he  is  an  editor — who  de 
clares  that  the  difference  between  wit  and  humor, 
and  again  between  talent  and  genius,  is  only  the 
difference  between  the  raspberry  and  the  straw 
berry.  Doubtless  God  might  have  made  a  better 
berry  than  the  strawberry,  and  doubtless  God 


20  PEN  AND  INK. 

might  have  given  man  a  better  gift  than  humor — 
but  he  never  did.  Woman  has  not  the  full  gift; 
she  has  wit  and  some  humor,  it  is  true,  but  she 
has  only  a  slighter  sense  of  humor,  whence  comes 
much  marital  unhappiness.  As  George  Eliot  tells 
us,  "a  difference  of  taste  in  jests  is  a  great  strain 
of  the  affections. " 

It  is  said  that  the  rustic,  both  the  male  and  the 
female  of  that  peculiar  species,  has  a  positive  hos 
tility  to  a  new  joke.  I  do  not  believe  this.  Of  a 
certainty  it  is  not  true  of  the  American  of  New 
England,  who  is  as  humorous  in  his  speech  as  he 
is  shrewd  in  his  business  dealings,  and  the  more 
humor  he  has  the  less  sharp  he  is  in  trade  and  the 
less  severe  in  his  views  as  to  the  necessity  of  work. 
We  may  cite  in  proof  of  this  Mrs.  Stowe's  delight 
ful  portrait  of  that  village  ne'er-do-well,  Sam  Law- 
son.  And  I  doubt  if  it  is  true  of  the  English  rustic 
as  he  really  is,  for  we  know  it  is  not  true  of  him  as 
he  appears  in  the  pages  of  George  Eliot  and  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Hardy.  There  he  has  a  mother-wit  of  his 
own,  and  although  fond  of  the  old  joke,  the  mean 
ing  of  which  has  been  fully  fathomed,  he  is  not 
intolerant  of  a  new  quip  or  a  fresh  gibe.  What  he 
cannot  abide  is  a  variation  in  the  accepted  form 
of  an  accepted  anecdote.  This  he  will  none  of — as 
a  child  resolutely  rejects  the  slightest  deviation 


ON  THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  JESTS.  31 

from  the  canonical  version  of  the  fairy-tale  with 
which  she  is  fondly  familiar.  The  rustic  and  the 
child  are  loyal  to  old  friends,  whether  it  be  The 
Sleeping  Beauty  in  the  Woods,  or  Brer  Rabbit  and 
the  Tar-Baby,  or  Old  Grouse  in  the  Gunroom,  at 
which  honest  Diggory  had  laughed  these  twenty 
years,  and  which  now,  alas !  is  utterly  lost  to  the 
knowledge  of  man,  even  Goldsmith's  latest  and 
most  learned  biographer  confessing  perforce  that 
he  has  been  wholly  unable  to  recover  it  from  out 
the  darkness  of  the  past. 
(1885) 


II 
THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


HEN  Sir  Walter  Scott  came  to  consider 
'  Gil  Bias/  and  the  alleged  plagiarisms 
it  contains  from  the  Spanish  story 
tellers,  he  spoke  with  the  frankness 
and  sturdy  sense  which  were  two  of 
chief  characteristics.  "Le  Sage's  claim  to 
originality  in  this  delightful  work,"  he  wrote, 
"has  been  idly,  I  had  almost  said  ungratefully, 
contested  by  those  critics  who  conceive  they  de 
tect  a  plagiarist  wherever  they  see  a  resemblance 
in  the  general  subject  of  the  work  to  one  which 
has  been  before  treated  by  an  inferior  artist.  It  is 
a  favorite  theme  of  laborious  dulness  to  trace  out 
such  coincidences  ;  because  they  appear  to  reduce 
genius  of  the  higher  order  to  the  usual  standard 
of  humanity,  and,  of  course,  to  bring  the  author 
nearer  a  level  with  his  critics.  It  is  not  the  mere 
outline  of  a  story,  not  even  the  adopting  some 
details  of  a  former  author,  which  constitutes  the 


26  PEN  AND  INK. 

literary  crime  of  plagiarism.  The  proprietor  of  the 
pit  from  whence  Chantrey  takes  his  clay  might  as 
well  pretend  to  a  right  in  the  figure  into  which  it 
is  moulded  under  his  plastic  fingers ;  and  the  ques 
tion  is  in  both  cases  the  same — not  so  much  from 
whom  the  original  substance  came,  as  to  whom 
it  owes  that  which  constitutes  its  real  merit  and 
excellence." 

In  his  delightful  paper  on  Gray,  Mr.  Lowell  de 
clares  that  "we  do  not  ask  where  people  got  their 
hints,  but  what  they  made  out  of  them."  Mr. 
Lowell,  I  doubt  me,  is  speaking  for  himself  alone, 
and  for  the  few  others  who  attempt  the  higher 
criticism  with  adequate  insight,  breadth,  and 
equipment.  Only  too  many  of  the  minor  critics 
have  no  time  to  ask  what  an  author  has  done,  they 
are  so  busy  in  asking  where  he  may  have  got  his 
hints.  Thus  it  is  that  the  air  is  full  of  accusations 
of  plagiary,  and  the  bringing  of  these  accusations  is 
a  disease  which  bids  fair  to  become  epidemic  in 
literary  journalism.  Perhaps  this  is  a  sign,  or  at 
least  a  symptom,  of  the  intellectual  decadence  of 
our  race  which  these  same  critics  sometimes  vent 
ure  to  announce.  In  the  full  flood  of  a  creative 
period  people  cannot  pause  to  consider  petty 
charges  of  plagiarism.  Greene's  violent  outbreak 
against  the  only  Shakescene  of  them  all,  who  had 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  37 

decked  himself  out  in  their  feathers,  seems  to  have 
excited  little  or  no  attention.  Nowadays,  a  pam 
phlet  like  Greene's  last  dying  speech  and  confes 
sion  would  serve  as  a  text  for  many  a  leading  article 
and  for  many  a  magazine  essay. 

"There  is,  I  fear,"  wrote  Lord  Tennyson  to  Mr. 
Dawson,  a  year  or  two  ago,  "a  prosaic  set  grow 
ing  up  among  us,  editors  of  booklets,  bookworms, 
index-hunters,  or  men  of  great  memories  and  no 
imagination  who  impute  themselves  to  the  poet, 
and  so  believe  that  he,  too,  has  no  imagination, 
but  is  forever  poking  his  nose  between  the  pages 
of  some  old  volumes  in  order  to  see  what  he  can 
appropriate. "  A  pleasant  coincidence  of  thought  is 
to  be  noted  between  these  words  of  Lord  Tenny 
son  and  the  remarks  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  about  '  Gil 
Bias/  Both  poets  think  ill  of  the  laborious  dulness 
of  the  literary  detective,  and  suggest  that  he  is  actu 
ated  by  malice  in  judging  others  by  himself.  The 
police  detective  is  akin  to  the  spy,  and  although 
his  calling  is  often  useful,  and  perhaps  even  neces 
sary,  we  are  not  wont  to  choose  him  as  our  bosom 
friend ;  the  amateur  literary  detective  is  an  almost 
useless  person,  who  does  for  pleasure  the  dirty 
work  by  which  the  real  detective  gets  his  bread. 

The  great  feat  of  the  amateur  literary  detective 
is  to  run  up  parallel  columns,  and  this  he  can  ac- 


28  PEN  AND  INK. 

complish  with  the  agility  of  an  acrobat.  When 
first  invented,  the  setting  of  parallel  passages  side 
by  side  was  a  most  ingenious  device,  deadly  to  an 
impostor  or  to  a  thief  caught  in  the  very  act  of 
literary  larceny.  But  these  parallel  passages  must 
be  prepared  with  exceeding  care,  and  with  the 
utmost  certainty.  Unless  the  matter  on  the  one 
side  exactly  balance  the  matter  on  the  other  side, 
like  the  packs  on  a  donkey's  back,  the  burden  is 
likely  to  fall  about  the  donkey's  feet,  and  he  may 
chance  to  break  his  neck.  Parallel  columns  should 
be  most  sparingly  used,  and  only  in  cases  of  abso 
lute  necessity.  As  they  are  employed  now  only 
too  often,  they  are  quite  inconclusive  ;  and  it  has 
been  neatly  remarked  that  they  are  perhaps  like 
parallel  lines,  in  that  they  would  never  meet, 
however  far  produced.  Nothing  can  be  more 
puerile,  childish,  infantine  even,  than  the  eager 
ness  with  which  the  amateur  literary  detective 
shows,  to  his  own  complete  satisfaction,  that  two 
of  the  most  original  authors  who  ever  wrote — 
Shakspere  and  Moliere — were  barefaced  borrowers 
and  convicted  plagiarists.  There  are  not  a  few 
other  of  his  deeds  almost  as  silly  as  this.  I  won 
der  that  the  secure  ass  (the  phrase  is  from  the 
'  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,'  and  not  mine,  I  regret 
to  say)  who  thinks  that  Sheridan  took  his  '  Rivals' 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  39 

from  Smollett's  '  Humphrey  Clinker '  and  his 
'  School  for  Scandal '  from  his  mother's  '  Memoirs 
of  Miss  Sydney  Biddulph ' — the  absurd  persons 
who  have  gravely  doubted  whether  Mr.  Stevenson 
did  not  find  the  suggestion  of  his  '  Strange  Case 
of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde '  in  Hawthorne's  '  Dr. 
Grimshawe's  Secret' — and  the  malicious  folk  who 
have  been  accusing  Mr.  Haggard  with  filching  the 
false  teeth  and  lifting  the  white  calves  of  other 
African  explorers  who  were  not  in  search  of  King 
Solomon's  mines — I  wonder  that  the  amateur  lit 
erary  detective  of  this  sort  has  never  seen  what  a 
strong  case  can  be  made  out  against  M.  Alphonse 
Daudet  (a  notorious  imitator  of  Dickens,  it  may  be 
remembered)  for  having  extracted  the  '  Rois  en 
Exile '  from  the  third  paragraph  of  the  first  chapter 
of  the  *  History  of  Henry  Esmond,'  and  against  Mr. 
Thackeray  for  having  derived  this  passage  from 
his  recollections  of  a  scene  in  Voltaire's  '  Candide.' 
It  was  the  original  owner  of  King  Solomon's 
mines  who  asserted  that  there  was  nothing  new 
under  the  sun ;  and  after  the  lapse  of  hundreds  of 
years  one  may  suggest  that  a  ready  acceptance  of 
the  charge  of  plagiarism  is  a  sign  of  low  culture, 
and  that  a  frequent  bringing  of  the  accusation  is 
a  sign  of  defective  education  and  deficient  intelli 
gence.  Almost  the  first  discovery  of  a  student  of 


^O  PEN  AND  INK. 

letters  is  that  the  history  of  literature  is  little  more 
than  a  list  of  curious  coincidences.  The  folk-tales 
which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  fiction  are  almost 
the  same  the  wide  world  over,  from  the  Eskimo 
at  the  top  of  North  America  to  the  Zulu  at  the  tip  of 
South  Africa ;  they  can  hardly  have  had  a  common 
source,  and  there  are  few  traces  of  conscious  bor 
rowing  or  of  unconscious  lending. 

These  folk-tales  are  as  ancient  as  they  are  wide 
spread,  and  when  Uncle  Remus  relates  the  advent 
ures  of  Brer  Rabbit  and  Brer  Terrapin,  he  is  re 
peating  a  variant  of  adventures  which  were  told 
in  Greece  before  Homer  sang.  And  as  these  folk 
tales  were  made  each  by  itself  and  yet  alike,  in 
many  places  and  at  all  ages  of  the  world,  so  in 
more  formal  literature  do  we  find  stories  strangely 
similar  one  to  another,  and  yet  independently  in 
vented.  People  have  always  been  ready,  like  the 
Athenians  of  old,  to  hear  or  to  tell  some  new 
thing — and  the  new  thing,  when  dissected,  is 
soon  seen  to  be  an  old  thing.  The  tales  have  all 
been  told.  If  we  were  to  take  from  the  goodman 
La  Fontaine  the  contes  which  had  had  another 
owner  before  he  found  them  by  the  highway,  he 
would  be  left  like  a  Manx  cat  or  the  flock  of  Little 
Bo-Peep.  There  are  some  situations,  primitive 
and  powerful,  which  recur  in  all  literatures  with 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  $\ 

the  inevitable  certainty  of  the  fate  which  domi 
nates  them.  What  is  the  '  Hamlet '  of  Shakspere, 
in  its  essence,  but  the  '  Orestes '  trilogy  of  -/Eschy- 
lus  ?  And  what  man  shall  be  bold  enough  to  claim 
for  himself  or  for  another  the  first  use  of  the  Hidden 
Will,  of  the  Infants-changed-at-Nurse,  or  of  the 
Stern-Parent-who-cuts-off-his-Son-with-a-Shilling? 
After  recording  a  slight  similarity  of  subject  and 
of  point  of  view  between  the  'Famille  Benoiton' 
of  M.  Victorien  Sardou  and  the  'Young  Mrs.  Win- 
throp'  of  Mr.  Bronson  Howard,  Mr.  William 
Archer  remarks  pertinently  that  "  in  the  domain 
of  the  drama  there  is  no  such  thing  as  private 
property  in  the  actual  soil ;  all  that  the  playwright 
can  demand  is  security  for  his  improvements,"  and 
he  adds  that  "were  tenure  in  fee-simple  permis 
sible,  the  whole  cultivable  area  would  long  ago 
have  been  occupied  by  a  syndicate  of  pestilent 
land-grabbers,  named  Menander,  Calderon,  Shak 
spere  &  Co.,  and  the  dramatist  of  to-day  would 
have  had  no  resource  save  emigration  to  some 
other  planet."  I  have  read  that  Schiller  in  the  last 
century,  and  Scribe  in  this,  made  out  a  list  of  all 
the  possible  dramatic  situations,  and  that  both  lists 
were  surprisingly  brief.  M.  Zola's  admirable  defi 
nition  of  art  is  "Nature  seen  through  a  tempera 
ment"  ;  and  the  most  a  man  may  bring  nowadays 


$2  PEN  AND  INK. 

is  his  temperament,  his  personal  equation,  his 
own  pair  of  spectacles,  through  which  he  may 
study  the  passing  show  in  his  own  way. 

As  it  is  with  situations  which  are  the  broad 
effects  of  the  drama  or  the  novel  or  the  poem,  so 
it  is  with  the  descriptions  and  the  dialogue  which 
make  the  smaller  effects.  Words  are  more  abun 
dant  than  situations,  but  they  are  wearing  out 
with  hard  usage.  Language  is  finite,  and  its  com 
binations  are  not  countless.  "It  is  scarcely  pos 
sible  for  any  one  to  say  or  write  anything  in  this 
late  time  of  the  world  to  which,  in  the  rest  of  the 
literature  of  the  world,  a  parallel  could  not  be 
found  somewhere,"  so  Lord  Tennyson  declared  in 
the  letter  from  which  I  have  already  quoted. 
"Are  not  human  eyes  all  over  the  world  looking 
at  the  same  objects,  and  must  there  not  conse 
quently  be  coincidences  of  thought  and  impres 
sions  and  expressions?"  The  laureate  was  not  at 
all  surprised  to  be  told  that  there  were  two  lines 
in  a  certain  Chinese  classic  (of  which  he  had  never 
heard)  exactly  like  two  of  his.  Once  I  found  an 
exceedingly  close  translation  of  one  of  Lord  Tenny 
son's  lines  in  a  French  comedy  in  verse,  and  when 
I  asked  the  dramatist  about  it,  I  soon  saw  that  he 
did  not  know  anything  about  the  English  poem, — 
or  even  about  the  English  poet. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  ^ 

In  cases  like  these  there  is  no  need  to  dispute 
the  good  faith  of  the  author  who  may  chance  to  be 
later  in  point  of  time.  ' '  When  a  person  of  fair  char 
acter  for  literary  honesty  uses  an  image  such  as 
another  has  employed  before  him,  the  presump 
tion  is  that  he  has  struck  upon  it  independently, 
or  unconsciously  recalled  it,  supposing  it  his 
own,"  said  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table. 
After  this  dictum  in  ethics,  Dr.  Holmes  enunciated 
a  subtle  psychologic  truth,  which  is  known  to  all 
conscientious  writers,  and  which  should  be  made 
known  to  all  amateur  literary  detectives:  "It  is 
impossible  to  tell,  in  a  great  many  cases,  whether 
a  comparison  which  suddenly  suggests  itself  is  a 
new  conception  or  a  recollection.  I  told  you  the 
other  day  that  I  never  wrote  a  line  of  verse  that 
seemed  to  me  comparatively  good  but  it  appeared 
old  at  once,  and  often  as  if  it  has  been  borrowed." 
Sheridan  bears  witness  to  the  same  effect  in  the 
preface  to  the  '  Rivals/  when  he  says  that  "  faded 
ideas  float  in  memory  like  half-forgotten  dreams  ; 
and  the  imagination  in  its  fullest  enjoyments  be 
comes  suspicious  of  its  offspring,  and  doubts 
whether  it  has  created  or  adopted."  Perhaps  the 
testimony  of  Sheridan  is  not  altogether  beyond 
suspicion  ;  he  had  an  easy  conscience  and  a  mar 
vellous  faculty  of  assimilation,  and  it  may  be  that 


34  1>EN  AND  INK. 

he  was  apologetically  making  the  plea  of  con 
fession  and  avoidance,  as  the  lawyers  call  it. 
But  I  think  that  Lord  Tennyson,  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
and  Mr.  Lowell  are  unimpeachable  witnesses.  It 
is  with  malice  prepense  that  I  have  quoted  from 
them  frequently  and  at  length,  and  perhaps  in 
excess,  that  I  might  establish  my  case  not  out  of 
my  own  mouth,  but  out  of  theirs. 

After  all,  there  is  little  need  to  lay  stress  on  the 
innocence  of  many  if  not  most  of  the  coincidences 
with  which  the  history  of  literature  is  studded. 
The  garden  is  not  large,  and  those  who  cultivate  it 
must  often  walk  down  the  same  path,  sometimes 
side  by  side,  and  sometimes  one  after  another, 
even  though  the  follower  neither  wishes  nor  in 
tends  to  tread  on  his  predecessor's  heels  or  to 
walk  in  his  footsteps.  They  may  gather  a  nose 
gay  of  the  same  flowers  of  speech.  They  may 
even  pluck  the  same  passion-flower,  not  knowing 
that  any  one  has  ever  before  broken  a  blossom 
from  that  branch.  Indeed,  when  we  consider 
how  small  the  area  is,  how  few  are  the  possible 
complications  of  plot,  how  easily  the  poetic  vocab 
ulary  is  exhausted,  the  wonder  is  really,  not  that 
there  are  so  many  parallel  passages,  but  that  there 
are  so  few.  In  the  one  field  which  is  not  circum 
scribed  there  is  very  little  repetition  :  human 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  35 

nature  is  limitless,  and  characters  comparatively 
rarely  pass  from  one  book  to  another.  The 
dramatists  and  the  romancers  have  no  choice  but 
to  treat  anew  as  best  they  may  the  well-worn 
incidents  and  the  weary  plots ;  the  poets  happen 
on  the  same  conceits  generation  after  generation  ; 
but  the  dramatists  and  the  romancers  and  the 
poets  know  that  there  is  no  limit  to  the  variety  of 
man,  and  that  human  nature  is  as  deep  and  as 
boundless  and  as  inexhaustible  as  the  ocean.  No 
matter  how  heavy  a  draft  Shakspere  and  Moliere 
may  have  made,  no  matter  how  skilfully  and  how 
successfully  Dickens  and  Thackeray  may  have 
angled,  no  matter  how  great  the  take  of  Haw 
thorne  and  Poe,  there  are  still  as  good  fish  in  the 
sea  of  humanity  as  ever  were  caught.  And  I 
offer  this  fact,  that  we  do  not  find  the  coincidence 
in  character  which  we  cannot  help  seeing  in  plot 
and  in  language,  as  a  proof  that  most  apparent 
plagiarism  is  quite  unconscious  and  due  chiefly  to 
the  paucity  of  material. 

Hitherto  I  have  considered  only  the  similarity 
which  was  unconscious.  Originality  is  difficult; 
it  is  never  accidental ;  and  it  is  to  be  obtained  only 
by  solitary  confinement  and  hard  labor.  To  make 
his  fiction  out  of  whole  cloth,  to  spin  his  net, 
spider-like,  out  of  himself,  is  one  of  the  highest 


36  PEN  AND  INK. 

achievements  of  the  intellect.  Only  a  rare  genius 
may  do  this,  and  he  must  do  it  rarely.  A  man 
may  always  draw  from  the  common  stock  without 
compunction,  and  there  are  many  circumstances 
under  which  he  may  borrow  unhesitatingly  from 
other  authors.  For  example,  Mr.  Haggard  has 
recently  been  encompassed  about  by  a  cloud  of 
false  witnesses,  accusing  him  of  having  plagiarized 
certain  episodes  of  his  story,  '  King  Solomon's 
Mines,'  from  a  certain  book  of  travels.  He  prompt 
ly  denied  the  charge,  and  of  course  it  fell  to  the 
ground  at  once.  But  had  he  done  what  he  was 
accused  of  doing,  there  would  have  been  no  harm 
in  it.  Mr.  Haggard,  in  writing  a  romance  of  Africa, 
would  have  been  perfectly  justified  in  using  the 
observations  and  experiences  of  African  travellers. 
Facts  are  the  foundation  of  fiction,  and  the  novelist 
and  the  romancer,  the  dramatist  and  the  poet,  may 
make  free  with  labors  of  the  traveller,  the  his 
torian,  the  botanist,  and  the  astronomer.  Within 
reason,  the  imaginative  author  may  help  himself 
to  all  that  the  scientific  author  has  stored  up.  One 
might  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  science — in 
which  I  include  history — exists  to  supply  facts  for 
fiction,  and  that  it  has  not  wholly  accomplished  its 
purpose  until  it  has  been  transmuted  in  the  im 
agination  of  the  poet.  If  Mr.  Haggard  had  made 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


37 


use  of  a  dozen  books  of  African  travel  in  the  com 
position  of  that  thrilling  and  delightful  romance  of 
adventure,  'King  Solomon's  Mines,'  there  would 
have  been  no  more  taint  of  plagiary  about  it  than 
there  was  in  Shakspere's  reworking  of  the  old 
chronicles  into  his  historical  plays. 

Shakspere  and  Moliere  borrowed  from  Plautus, 
as  Plautus  had  borrowed  from  Menander ;  and  this 
again  is  not  plagiarism.  Every  literary  worker  has 
a  right  to  draw  from  the  accumulated  store  of  the 
past,  so  long  as  he  does  not  attempt  to  conceal 
what  he  has  done  nor  to  take  credit  for  what  is  not 
his  own  invention,  and  so  long  as  he  has  wholly 
absorbed  and  assimilated  and  steeped  in  his  own 
gray  matter  what  he  has  derived  from  his  prede 
cessors.  The  elder  Dumas  has  told  us  how  he 
found  some  of  the  scattered  elements  of  his  virile 
and  vigorous  drama  '  Henri  III.'  in  Anquetil  and  in 
Scott  and  in  Schiller;  but  the  play  is  his,  none  the 
less ;  and  this  was  no  plagiarism,  for  he  had  mixed 
himself,  with  what  he  borrowed,  "an  incalculable 
increment,"  as  Mr.  Lowell  said  of  Gray.  '  Henri  III.' 
lives  with  its  own  life,  which  Dumas  gave  it,  and 
which  is  as  different  as  possible  from  the  life  of 
the  fragments  of  Anquetil,  Scott,  and  Schiller,  each 
of  these  again  differing  one  from  the  other.  It 
was  as  unlike  as  may  be  to  that  merely  literary 


38  PEN  AND  INK. 

imitation  which  Hawthorne  compared  to  a  plaster 
cast. 

Another  French  dramatist,  M.  Sardou,  had  prof 
ited  by  the  reading  of  Poe's  'Purloined  Letter' 
when  he  sat  down  to  plan  his  '  Pattes  de  Mouche'; 
but  it  is  absurd  to  talk  of  plagiary  here,  and  to  call 
M.  Sardou's  charming  comedy  a  dramatization  of 
Poe's  short  story,  for,  although  the  bare  essential 
idea  is  the  same,  the  development  is  radically  dif 
ferent.  And  in  like  manner  Poe  found  an  incident 
in  Mr.  Mudford's  'Iron  Shroud'  which  probably 
suggested  to  him  his  own  appalling  tale  of  the 
'Pit  and  the  Pendulum/  Here  what  Poe  took  from 
Mr.  Mudford  was  very  little  compared  with  what 
he  contributed  himself;  and  in  any  discussion  of 
plagiarism  quite  the  most  important  question  is 
the  relative  value  to  the  borrower  of  the  thing 
borrowed.  If  he  has  flocks  of  his  own,  he  may 
lift  the  ewe  lamb  of  his  neighbor,  and  only  labori 
ous  dulness  will  object.  The  plagiarist,  in  fact,  is 
the  man  who  steals  his  brooms  ready  made,  be 
cause  he  does  not  know  how  to  make  them. 
Dumas  and  M.  Sardou  and  Poe  were  men  having 
a  highly  developed  faculty  of  invention,  and  seek 
ing  originality  diligently.  Those  from  whom  they 
borrowed  have  no  more  right  to  claim  the  resulting 
works  than  has  the  spectator  who  lends  a  coin  to  a 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  39 

conjurer  a  right  to  consider  himself  a  partner  in  the 
ingenious  trick  the  conjurer  performs  with  it.  If 
this  be  plagiary,  make  the  most  of  it.  Let  us  all 
wish  for  more  of  it.  And  this  reminds  me  of  a 
little  story,  as  Lincoln  used  to  say :  in  the  darkest 
days  of  our  war,  when  defeat  followed  defeat,  and 
Grant  alone  was  victorious  at  Vicksburg,  some 
busybody  went  to  Lincoln  and  told  him  that  Grant 
drank  whiskey.  "Does  he ?  "  said  the  President, 
gravely.  "Do  you  happen  to  know  what  kind  of 
whiskey  it  is  ?  Because  I  should  like  to  send  a 
barrel  of  it  to  some  of  the  other  generals." 

"Far  indeed  am  I  from  asserting  that  books,  as 
well  as  nature,  are  not,  and  ought  not  to  be,  sug 
gestive  to  the  poet,"  wrote  Lord  Tennyson.  "I  am 
sure  that  I  myself  and  many  others  find  a  peculiar 
charm  in  those  passages  of  such  great  masters  as 
Virgil  or  Milton,  where  they  adopt  the  creation  of 
a  bygone  poet,  and  reclothe  it,  more  or  less,  ac 
cording  to  their  fancy."  Wordsworth  said  that 
Gray  helped  himself  from  everybody  and  every 
where  ;  but  what  Gray  made  out  of  these  old  bits 
borrowed  from  others  was  a  new  poem,  and  it  was 
his  own.  In  the  latest  editions  of  Gray's  poems,  as 
Mr.  Lowell  has  put  it  picturesquely,  "The  thin  line 
of  text  stands  at  the  top  of  the  page  like  cream, 
and  below  it  is  the  skim-milk  drawn  from  many 


40  PEN  AND  INK. 

milky  mothers  of  the  herd  out  of  which  it  has 
risen."  It  was  because  the  author  of  'Evangeline' 
followed  the  example  of  the  author  of  the  'Elegy' 
that  Poe  was  able  to  write  his  foolish  paper  on 
'Mr.  Longfellow  and  other  Plagiarists' — a  wanton 
attack  which  Longfellow  bore  with  beautiful  seren 
ity.  One  must  set  a  plagiarist  to  cry  "Stop  thief! " 
and  Poe  was  not  above  stealing  his  brooms,  or  at 
least  his  smaller  brushes,  ready  made.  We  may 
absolve  him  for  levying  on  Mudford  for  the  'Pit  and 
the  Pendulum,'  but  in  his  'Marginalia'  he  retailed 
as  his  own  Sheridan's  joke  about  the  phoenix  and 
Whitbread's  poulterer's  description  of  it. 

I  believe  that  both  Ben  Jonson  and  the  elder 
Dumas  defended  their  forays  into  the  marches  of 
their  elders,  and  even  of  their  contemporaries,  by 
the  bold  assertion  that  genius  does  not  steal,  it 
conquers.  And  there  is  force  in  the  plea.  Genius 
takes  by  right  of  eminent  domain,  and  rectifies  its 
frontier  by  annexing  outlying  territory,  making 
fruitful  that  which  before  was  but  a  barren  waste. 
In  literature,  that  is  his  at  last  who  makes  best  use 
of  it.  And  here  is  the  essence  of  the  controversy 
in  a  nutshell :  it  is  plagiarism  for  an  author  to  take 
anything  from  another  author  and  reproduce  it 
nakedly  ;  but  it  is  not  necessarily  plagiarism  if  he 
reclothes  it  and  dresses  it  up  anew.  If  the  second 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  4I 

comer  can  improve  on  the  work  of  the  first  comer, 
if  he  makes  it  over  and  makes  it  better,  and 
makes  it  his  own,  we  accept  the  result  and  ask  no 
questions.  But  if  he  make  no  change,  or  if  he 
make  a  change  for  the  worse,  we  send  for  the 
police  at  once.  A  man  may  be  allowed  to  keep 
his  borrowed  brats,  if  he  clothe  them  and  feed 
them  and  educate  them,  and  if  he  make  no 
attempt  to  disguise  them,  and  if  he  is  not  guilty 
of  the  fatal  mistake  of  disfiguring  them  "  as  the 
gypsies  do  stolen  children  to  make  'em  pass  for 
their  own."  (This  figure,  by  the  way,  was  an 
orphan  of  Churchill's  when  Sheridan  came  along 
and  adopted  it.)  Thus,  we  find  it  hard  to  forgive 
Herrick  for  one  of  his  thefts  from  Suckling,  when 
he  took  the  loveliest  lines  of  the  lovely  '  Ballad 
upon  a  Wedding' : 

Her  feet  beneath  her  petticoat, 
Like  little  mice,  stole  in  and  out, 
As  if  they  feared  the  light, 

and  in  his  '  Hesperides '  he  spoilt  them  to 

Her  pretty  feet,  like  snails,  did  creep  a  little  out. 

Nothing  is  further  from  my  desire  than  that  I 
should  be  taken  either  as  a  defender  of  plagiarism 
or  as  a  denier  of  its  existence.  It  exists,  and  it  is 


42  PEN  AND  INK. 

an  ugly  crime.  What  I  am  seeking  to  show  is 
that  it  is  not  as  frequent  as  many  may  imagine, 
and  more  especially  that  much  which  is  called 
plagiarism  is  not  criminal  at  all,  but  perfectly 
legitimate.  For  instance,  Mr.  Charles  Reade's  in 
corporation  of  fragments  of  the  '  Dialogues  '  of 
Erasmus  in  the  'Cloister  and  the  Hearth,'  and  of 
Swift's  '  Polite  Conversation '  in  the  '  Wandering 
Heir,'  was  a  proper  and  even  a  praiseworthy  use 
of  preexisting  material.  But  Mr.  Reade  did  not 
always  remain  within  his  rights,  and  it  is  im 
possible  to  doubt  that  his  '  Portrait '  was  first 
hung  in  the  private  gallery  of  Mme.  Reybaud, 
and  that  some  of  his  '  Hard  Cash '  was  filched 
from  the  coffers  of  the  'Pauvres  de  Paris'  of 
MM.  Brisebarre  and  Nus.  Mme.  Reybaud's  pic 
ture  was  not  a  Duchess  of  Devonshire  which  a 
man  might  so  fall  in  love  with  that  he  could 
not  help  stealing  it  —  indeed,  it  is  not  easy  to 
discover  why  Mr.  Reade  wanted  it ;  but  the 
drama  of  MM.  Brisebarre  and  Nus  is  ingeniously 
pathetic,  and  although  no  one  has  made  as  skil 
ful  use  of  its  fable  as  Mr.  Reade,  it  has  served 
to  suggest  also  Miss  Braddon's  '  Rupert  God 
win,  Banker,'  Mr.  Sterling  Coyne's  'Fraud  and 
its  Victims,'  and  Mr.  Dion  Boucicault's  '  Streets  of 
New-York.' 


THE   ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


43 


It  is  in  the  theatre  that  we  hear  the  most  accusa 
tions  of  plagiarism.  Apparently  there  is  an  un 
willingness  on  the  part  of  the  public  to  believe 
that  a  play  can  be  original,  and  a  dramatist 
nowadays  is  forced  not  only  to  affirm  his  in 
nocence,  but  almost  to  prove  it.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  habit  of  adapting  from  the 
French — a  habit  now  happily  in  its  decline — is 
responsible  for  this  state  of  things,  for  the  laxity 
of  morals  on  the  part  of  the  author,  and  for  the 
general  and  ungenerous  suspicion  on  the  side  of 
the  public. 

It  is  the  playwright's  fault,  one  must  confess,  if 
the  playgoer  is  doubtful  as  to  the  paternity  of  every 
new  play.  So  many  pieces  were  brought  out  as 
"new  and  original,"  which  were  neither  original 
nor  new,  that  the  playgoer  was  confirmed  in  his 
suspicions;  and  he  finds  it  hard  to  surrender  the 
habit  of  doubt  even  now  when  a  French  drama  in 
an  English  or  American  theatre  generally  bears  the 
French  author's  name,  and  when  the  best  work  of 
the  best  English  and  American  dramatists  is  really 
their  own.  Mr.  Herman  Merivale  and  Mr.  Bronson 
Howard,  Mr.  Gilbert  and  Mr.  Pinero,  and  other  of 
the  little  band  of  young  playmakers  whose  work 
seems  to  promise  a  possible  revival  of  the  English 
drama  as  a  form  of  art  and  a  department  of  litera- 


44  PEN  AND  INK. 

ture,  are  quite  above  the  meanness  of  taking  a 
foreign  author's  plot  without  authority  or  acknowl 
edgment.  Yet  they  suffer  for  the  sins  of  their 
predecessors. 

Credit,  said  a  great  economist,  is  suspicion 
asleep ;  and  the  saying  is  as  true  in  the  playmaking 
profession  as  it  is  in  the  trade  of  moneymaking. 
Suspicion  is  suffering  from  an  acute  attack  of  in 
somnia  just  now,  and  many  dramatic  critics  are 
quick  to  declare  a  resemblance  between  Macedon 
and  Monmouth,  if  there  be  salmons  in  both,  and 
when  the  dramatist  is  shown  to  have  lifted  a  tiny 
lamb  they  are  ready  to  hang  him  for  a  stalwart 
sheep.  Now,  there  is  no  department  of  literature 
in  which  similarities  are  as  inevitable  as  they  are  in 
the  drama.  I  have  tried  to  show  already  that  the 
elements  of  the  drama  are  comparatively  few,  and 
that  the  possible  combinations  are  not  many. 
There  are  only  a  few  themes  suited  for  treatment 
in  the  theatre,  and  many  a  topic  which  a  novelist 
can  handle  to  advantage  the  dramatist  is  debarred 
from  attempting  by  the  conditions  of  the  stage.  A 
certain  likeness  there  must  needs  be  between  the 
new  plays  and  the  old  plays  in  which  the  same 
subject  has  been  discussed  by  the  dramatist.  And 
these  coincidences  may  be  as  innocent  as  they  are 
"curious." 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


45 


I  remember  that  when  Mr.  Dion  Boucicault  origi 
nally  produced  the  '  Shaughraun  ' — it  was  at  Wai- 
lack's  Theatre  in  New- York  ten  or  twelve  years 
ago — there  was  an  attempt  to  prove  that  he  had 
taken  his  plot  from  an  earlier  Irish  drama  by  Mr. 
Wybert  Reeve.  At  first  sight  the  similarity  between 
the  two  plays  was  really  striking,  and  parallel  col 
umns  were  erected  with  ease.  But  a  closer  investi 
gation  revealed  that  all  that  was  common  to  these 
two  plays  was  common  to  fifty  other  Irish  plays, 
and  that  all  that  gave  value  to  the  'Shaughraun' — 
the  humor,  the  humanity,  the  touches  of  pathos, 
the  quick  sense  of  character — was  absent  from  the 
other  play.     There  is  a  formula  for  the  mixing  of 
an  Irish  drama,  and  Mr.  Reeve  and  Mr.  Boucicault 
had  each  prepared    his  piece    according  to  this 
formula,  making  due  admixture  of  the  Maiden-in- 
Distress,  the  Patriot-in-danger-of-his-Life,  and  the 
Cowardly   Informer,   who   have   furnished   forth 
many  score  plays  since  first  the  Red-Coats  were 
seen  in  the  Green  Isle.  Both  dramatists  had  drawn 
from  the  common  stock  of  types  and  incidents, 
and  there  was  really  no  reason  to  believe  that  Mr. 
Boucicault  was  indebted  to  Mr.  Reeve  for  anything, 
because  Mr.  Reeve  had  little  in  his  play  which  had 
not  been  in  twenty  plays  before,  and  which  Mr. 
Boucicault  could  not  have  put  together  out  of  his 


46  PEN  AND  INK. 

recollections  of  these  without  any  knowledge  of 
that.  Of  course  there  is  a  great  difference  between 
the  original  and  the  commonplace,  but  if  a  man 
cannot  be  the  former  it  is  no  sin  to  be  the  latter. 
Commonplace  is  not  plagiarism.  That  a  coat  is 
threadbare  is  no  proof  that  it  has  been  stolen — on 
the  contrary. 

To  any  one  understanding  the  subtlety  of  mental 
processes,  and  especially  the  movements  of  the 
imagination,  a  similarity  of  situation  is  often  not 
only  not  a  proof  of  plagiarism,  but  a  proof  that 
there  has  been  no  plagiarism.  This  sounds  like  a 
paradox,  but  I  think  I  can  make  my  meaning  clear 
and  evident.  When  we  find  the  same  strikingly 
original  idea  differently  handled  by  two  authors, 
we  may  absolve  the  later  from  any  charge  of 
literary  theft  if  we  find  that  his  treatment  of  the 
novel  situation  differs  from  his  predecessor's.  If 
the  treatment  is  different,  we  may  assume  that  the 
second  writer  was  not  aware  of  the  existence  of 
the  first  writer's  work.  And  for  this  reason  :  if 
the  later  author  were  acquainted  with  the  startlingly 
novel  effect  of  the  earlier  author,  he  could  not  have 
treated  the  same  subject  without  repeating  certain 
of  the  minor  peculiarities  also.  He  must  perforce 
have  taken  over  with  the  theme  in  some  measure 
the  treatment  also.  All  literary  workmen  know 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


47 


how  difficult  it  is  to  disentangle  the  minor  details 
from  the  main  idea,  and  to  strip  the  idea  naked, 
discarding  the  mere  detail.  Had  the  second  writer 
known  of  the  first  writer's  work,  he  could  not  help 
being  influenced  by  it.  Thus  it  is  that  a  similarity 
of  subject  may  be  evidence  of  originality.  There 
is  a  short  story  by  Fitzjames  O'Brien,  called  'What 
Was  It? '  in  which  there  is  a  palpable  but  invisible 
being.  Since  this  was  first  published  there  have 
been  two  other  short  stories  on  the  same  idea,  one 
published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  by  Mr.  Charles 
de  Kay,  and  the  other  published  anonymously  in 
the  Cornbitt  Magazine.  The  tale  in  the  Cornbitt 
coincides  in  detail  as  well  as  in  idea,  and  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  declare  its  anonymous  author 
guiltless  of  plagiarism.  But  Mr.  de  Kay's  story 
was  wholly  different  in  its  elaboration,  and  the  two 
tales,  although  the  chief  figure  in  each  was  a  being 
palpable  but  invisible,  were  as  unlike  as  possible. 
Here  there  was  obviously  no  plagiarism.  The 
coat — to  take  up  the  figure  of  the  last  para 
graph — was  made  of  the  same  cloth,  but  its  cut 
was  not  the  same. 

(Lately — since  this  paper  first  appeared — the 
central  figure  of  Fitzjames  O'Brien's  story  has 
been  seen  again  in  'Le  Horla'  of  M.  Guy  de  Mau 
passant,  but  with  a  treatment  so  personal  and  a 


48  PEN  AND  INK. 

modification  so  striking  that  it  seems  impossible 
that  the  French  author  has  not  happened  on  it  in 
dependently, — however  easy  it  might  be  to  pre 
pare  parallel  columns  to  prove  him  a  plagiarist.) 

Three  or  four  years  ago  the  Saturday  Review 
laid  down  the  law  of  plagiarism  in  three  clauses  : 

1.  "In  the  first  place,  we  would  permit  any  great 
modern  artist  to  recut  and  to  set  anew  the  literary 
gems  of  classic  times  and  of  the  Middle  Ages." 

2.  "Our  second  rule  would  be  that  all  authors 
have  an  equal  right  to  the  stock  situations  which 
are  the  common  store  of  humanity."   3.  "  Finally, 
we  presume  that  an  author  has  a  right  to  borrow 
or  buy  an  idea,  if  he  frankly  acknowledges  the 
transaction."    In  commenting  on  this  code,  I  sug 
gested  that  there  might  be  a  difficulty  of  interpre 
tation  in  the  first  clause,  for  who  is  to  declare  any 
modern  a  great  artist?     In  the  second  clause  the 
law  is  clearly  stated,  and  whether  any  given  situa 
tion  is  or  is  not  common  property  is  a  question  of 
fact  for  the  jury.     The  only  difficulty  in  applying 
the  third  clause  is  in  defining  precisely  the  degree 
of  frankness  and  fulness  required  in  acknowledg 
ing  the  indebtedness.     But  hypercriticism  is  out 
of  place  in  considering  a  suggestion  as  valuable,  as 
needful  just  now,  and  as  neatly  put  up  as  this 
triple    law  of  the  contributor  to  the   Saturday 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM. 


49 


Review.  A  general  acceptance  of  this  code  would 
tend  to  clear  the  air  of  the  vague  charges  of  pla 
giarism  which  hang  in  heavy  clouds  over  the  liter 
ary  journals.  Before  we  can  decide  whether  an 
author  is  guilty  of  the  offence,  we  must  be  agreed 
on  what  constitutes  the  crime,  what  are  its  ele 
ments,  and  what  are  the  exemptions.  I  have 
ventured  to  draw  up  the  statute  of  exemptions  in 
a  form  slightly  different  from  that  given  in  the 
Saturday  Review,  a  little  broader  and  stronger, 
and  perhaps  a  little  simpler :  A  writer  is  at  liberty 
to  use  the  work  of  his  predecessors  as  he  will, 
provided  always  that  (i)  he  does  not  take  credit 
(even  by  implication)  for  what  he  has  not  invented, 
and  (2)  that  he  does  not  in  any  way  infringe  on 
the  pecuniary  rights  of  the  original  owner. 

When  M.  Sardou  brought  out  the  farcical  com 
edy  '  Les  Pommes  du  Voisin,'  he  was  accused 
of  having  stolen  it  from  a  tale  of  Charles  de  Ber 
nard,  and  he  retorted  instantly  with  evidence  that 
he  had  the  permission  of  the  holders  of  the  Ber 
nard  copyrights,  who  were  to  share  in  the  profits 
of  the  play.  Here  M.  Sardou  was  innocent  under 
the  second  clause  of  my  law,  but  guilty  under  the 
first,  insomuch  as  he  had  concealed  his  indebted 
ness  to  Charles  de  Bernard  and  had  taken  credit 
for  an  invention  which  was  not  his  own.  When 


5O  PEN  AND  INK. 

Mr.  Charles  Reade  turned  Mrs.  Burnett's  '  That 
Lass  o'  Lowrie's'  into  a  play  called  'Joan/  without 
asking  the  permission  of  the  American  author,  he 
was  guilty  under  the  second  clause  and  innocent 
under  the  first,  for  there  was  no  concealment  of 
the  source  of  the  drama. 

With  a  proper  understanding  of  what  is  and 
what  is  not  plagiarism,  there  should  go  a  greater 
circumspection  in  bringing  the  accusation.  Plagiar 
ism  is  the  worst  of  literary  crimes.  It  is  theft, 
neither  more  nor  less.  All  who  desire  to  uphold 
the  honor  of  literature,  and  to  see  petty  larceny 
and  highway  robbery  meet  with  their  just  punish 
ment,  are  concerned  that  the  charge  shall  not  be 
idly  brought  or  carelessly  answered.  But  now  so 
often  has  the  amateur  literary  detective  cried 
"Wolf"  that  patience  is  exhausted,  and  accusa 
tions  of  literary  theft  have  been  flung  broadcast, 
until  they  may  be  met  with  a  smile  of  contempt. 
This  is  not  as  it  should  be.  It  is  contrary  to  public 
policy  that  the  literary  conscience  should  become 
callous.  The  charge  of  plagiarism  is  very  serious, 
and  it  should  not  be  lightly  brought  or  lightly 
borne.  The  accusation  is  very  easy  to  make  and 
very  hard  to  meet;  it  should  be  a  boomerang, 
which,  when  skilfully  thrown,  brings  down  the 
quarry  with  a  single  deadly  blow,  but  which, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  PLAGIARISM.  51 

when  carelessly  cast,  rebounds  swiftly  and  breaks 
the  head  of  him  who  threw  it.  The  man  who 
makes  the  charge  of  plagiarism  should  be  ready 
to  stand  to  his  guns,  and  to  pay  the  penalty  of 
having  opened  fire.  And  the  penalty  for  having 
failed  to  prove  the  accusation  should  be  heavy. 
The  accuser  should  be  put  under  bonds,  so  to 
speak,  to  make  his  charge  good,  and  if  he  loses  his 
case  he  should  be  cast  in  damages.  It  is  not  right 
to  force  an  author  either  unjustly  to  lie  under  an 
accusation  of  theft,  or  to  undergo  the  annoyance 
and  expense  of  refuting  vague  allegations,  urged 
in  wanton  carelessness  by  some  irresponsible  per 
son.  Nothing  is  more  disagreeable  or  thankless 
than  a  dispute  with  an  inferior.  Years  ago  Dr. 
Holmes  declared  the  hydrostatic  paradox  of  con 
troversy:  "Controversy  equalizes  fools  and  wise 
men  in  the  same  way — and  the  fools  know  it! " 

If  we  were  to  hold  to  a  strict  accountability  the 
feeble-minded  persons  who  delight  in  pointing  out 
alleged  coincidences  and  similarities,  if  we  were  to 
discourage  the  accusation  of  plagiarism,  except  on 
abundant  evidence,  if  we  were  to  declare  that 
any  man  who  fails  to  sustain  his  charge  shall  be 
discredited,  we  should  do  much  to  put  down 
plagiarism  itself.  When  the  difficulties  and  the 
dangers  of  making  the  accusation  are  increased — 


52  PEN  AND  INK. 

and  it  is  now  neither  difficult  nor  dangerous — the 
number  of  accusations  will  be  decreased  at  once, 
and  in  time  the  public  conscience  will  be  quickened. 
Then  it  would  be  possible  to  get  serious  attention 
for  the  serious  case  of  literary  theft,  and  then  the 
writer  who  might  be  found  with  stolen  wares  con 
cealed  about  his  person  would  be  visited  with 
swifter  condemnation  and  with  more  certain  pun 
ishment.  But  now  all  we  can  do  is  to  remember 
that 

The  man  who  plants  cabbages  imitates  too. 
(1886) 


Ill 

THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE 
PREFACE 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE  — 


A  Confidential  Communication  to  all  Makers  of  Books. 


PPARENTLY  the  true  theory  of  the  Pref 
ace  is  apprehended  by  very  few  of 
those  who  are,  by  trade,  makers  of 
books — to  use  Carlyle's  characteri 
zation  of  his  own  calling.  Mr.  Mat 
thew  Arnold,  indeed,  master  of  all  literary  arts, 
was  highly  skilful  in  the  use  of  the  Preface,  which, 
in  his  hands,  served  to  drive  home  the  bolt  of  his 
argument,  and  to  rivet  it  firmly  on  the  other  side. 
Those  who  have  read  one  of  Mr.  Arnold's  prefaces 
know  what  to  expect,  and  fall  to,  with  increased 
appetite,  on  the  book  itself.  But  not  many  men 
may  wield  the  weapons  of  Mr.  Arnold,  and  very 
few,  as  I  have  hinted  already,  are  skilled  in  the  use 
of  the  Preface.  Many,  ignorant  of  its  utility, 
choose  to  ignore  it  altogether.  More,  accepting  it 
as  a  necessary  evil,  acquit  themselves  of  it  in  the 
most  perfunctory  fashion.  There  is  slight  sur 
vival  of  the  tradition  which  made  the  appeal  to 


56  PEN  AND  INK. 

the  Gentle  Reader  a  fit  and  proper  custom.  But 
nowadays  the  appeal  is  useless,  and  the  Gentle 
Reader — oh,  where  is  he?  In  the  days  when 
there  was  a  Gentle  Reader  there  was  no  giant 
critic  to  appal  the  trembling  author  with  his 
thunderous  Fee-Fo-Fum.  In  the  beginning,  when 
printing  was  a  new  invention,  it  served  for  the 
multiplication  of  books  alone  ;  newspapers  lagged 
long  after ;  and  it  is  only  in  the  present  century 
that  the  reading  public  began  to  allow  that  middle 
man,  the  critic,  to  taste  and  try  before  they  buy. 
The  Preface  in  forma  pauperis,  in  which  the  author 
confessed  his  sinful  publication  and  implored  for 
giveness,  urging  as  his  sole  excuse  "hunger  and 
request  of  friends,"  is  now  as  much  out  of  date 
and  as  antiquated  in  style  as  the  fulsome  dedica 
tion  to  a  noble  patron.  The  two  lived  together 
and  died  together  about  the  time  when  the  work 
ing  man  of  letters  moved  out  of  his  lodgings  in 
Grub  Street. 

The  Preface  in  which  the  writer  takes  a  humor 
ous  view  of  his  own  work  is  a  late  device ;  it  is 
capable  of  good  results  in  the  hands  of  a  literary 
artist  like  Mr.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  who  sug 
gests  in  the  pages  which  prepare  us  to  enjoy  his 
record  of  '  An  Inland  Voyage '  that  in  his  Preface 
an  author  should  stand  afar  off  and  look  at  his 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE. 


57 


book  affectionately,  if  he  will,  but  dispassionately. 
"It  is  best,  in  such  circumstances,"  he  asserts, 
"to  represent  a  delicate  shade  of  manner  be 
tween  humility  and  superiority,  as  if  the  book 
had  been  written  by  some  one  else,  and  you  had 
merely  run  over  it  and  inserted  what  was  good." 
Clever  as  this  is,  and  characteristic  and  delightful 
as  its  humor  is,  I  feel  constrained  to  assert  my  be 
lief  that  Mr.  Stevenson  is  not  standing  on  the  solid 
ground  of  a  sound  theory.  Mr.  Stevenson  is  a 
writer  of  exceptional  gifts,  and  he  may  venture  on 
liberties  which  would  be  fatal  to  the  rest  of  us : 
his  example  affords  no  safe  rule  for  ordinary  mor 
tals.  In  the  Preface  a  man  must  take  himself  seri 
ously,  for  a  Preface  is  a  very  serious  thing.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  the  humorous  attitude  is 
much  wiser  than  the  self-depreciatory  and  the  apol 
ogetic,  which  are,  unfortunately,  far  more  com 
mon.  A  humorist  has,  at  least,  a  wholesome  belief 
in  himself,  and  he  can  hide  his  doubting  sorrow 
with  a  smile  ;  whereas  the  plaintive  author,  who 
confesses  his  weakness  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  is  a 
sorry  spectacle  that  no  critic  need  respect. 

The  cause  of  the  apologetic  Preface  is  obvious 
enough.  Although  printed  at  the  beginning  of 
the  book,  the  Preface  is  the  final  thing  written. 
When  the  long  labor  of  composition  is  over  at 


58  PEN  AND  INK. 

last,  and  the  intense  strain  is  relaxed  suddenly, 
then  it  is  that  the  author  sits  down  to  his  Preface. 
There  is  a  cooling  of  the  enthusiasm  which  has 
carried  him  through  his  work ;  there  is  often, 
indeed,  a  violent  reaction ;  and  it  is  at  this  mo 
ment  of  depression  and  despondency,  when  the 
writer  is  a  prey  to  dread  doubt  about  his  book  and 
about  himself,  that  the  Preface  has  to  be  composed. 
Just  then  the  author  sometimes  wonders  whether 
it  is  not  his  duty  to  throw  what  he  has  written  in 
to  the  fire,  and  so  rid  the  world  of  a  misconceived 
and  misshapen  abortion.  Rarely  is  this  feeling, 
acute  as  it  is,  and  painful,  quite  strong  enough  to 
make  the  author  actually  cast  his  MS.  into  the 
grate — never  until,  like  Pendennis,  he  has  made 
sure  that  the  fire  is  out.  But  his  morbidity  of  spirit 
and  his  self-distrust  find  vent  in  the  Preface.  Not 
unfrequently  is  the  Preface  worded  like  a  last 
dying  speech  and  confession.  As  M.  Octave  Uz- 
anne  says  in  the  lively  Preface  to  his  lively  little 
book  called  the  'Caprices  d'un  Bibliophile,'  "the 
Preface  is  the  salutation  to  the  reader,  and  too 
often,  alas  !  the  terrible  salutation  of  the  gladiators 
to  Caesar — ZMorituri  te  salutant!  " 

This  is  rank  heresy  :  and  all  such  heretics  should 
be  burnt  at  the  stake,  or  at  least  they  should  have 
their  books  burnt  in  the  market-place  by  the  com- 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE. 


59 


mon  hangman.  The  Preface  is  not  the  fit  time 
and  occasion  for  the  author  to  exhale  his  plaints, 
to  make  confession  of  his  sins,  and  to  promise  to 
do  penance.  It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  Preface  is  the  most  important  part  of  a  book, 
except  the  Index.  Anybody  can  write  a  book, 
such  as  it  is,  but  only  a  gifted  man,  or  a  man 
trained  in  the  art,  can  write  a  Preface,  such  as  it 
ought  to  be. 

In  the  Preface  the  author  must  put  his  best  foot 
foremost,  and  this  is  often  the  premier  pas  qui 
coute.  A  Preface  should  be  appetizing,  alluring, 
enticing.  As  a  battle  well  joined  is  half-won,  as  a 
work  well  begun  is  half-done,  so  a  book  with  a 
good  Preface  is  half-way  on  the  high-road  to  suc 
cess.  In  the  Preface  the  author  offers  his  first- 
fruits  and  pours  his  libation.  In  the  Preface  the 
author  sets  a  sample  of  his  text  as  in  a  show- 
window.  In  the  Preface  the  author  strikes  the 
key-note  of  his  work.  Therefore  must  the  good 
Preface  set  forth  the  supreme  excellence  of  the 
book  it  should  precede,  as  a  brass-band  goes 
before  a  regiment.  As  delicately,  and  yet  as  un 
hesitatingly,  as  the  composer  knows  how,  the 
Preface  should  sound  triumphant  paeans  of  exult 
ant  self-praise.  There  is  no  need  that  a  Preface 
should  be  long ;  it  takes  a  large  cart  to  carry  a 


60  PEN  AND  INK. 

score  of  empty  casks,  almost  worthless,  while  a 
ten-thousand-dollar  diamond  may  go  snugly  in  a 
waistcoat-pocket.  But  a  Preface  must  be  strong 
enough  to  do  its  allotted  work.  Now,  its  allotted 
work  —  and  here  we  are  laying  bare  the  secret  of 
the  true  theory  of  the  Preface — is  to  furnish  to  the 
unwitting  critic  a  syllabus  or  a  skeleton  of  the 
criticism  which  you  wish  to  have  him  write. 

The  thoughtless  may  declare  that  "nobody 
reads  a  Preface "  ;  but  there  could  be  no  more 
fatal  blunder.  Perhaps  that  impalpable  entity,  the 
general  reader,  may  skip  it  not  infrequently  ;  but 
that  tangible  terror,  the  critic,  never  fails  to  read 
the  Preface,  even  when  he  reads  no  farther.  Now 
and  again  the  general  reader  may  dispense  with 
the  reading  of  the  Preface,  as  legislative  assemblies 
dispense  with  the  reading  of  the  minutes  of  the 
last  meeting,  that  they  may  the  sooner  get  to  the 
business  in  hand.  The  critic  is  a  very  different 
sort  of  person  from  the  general  reader,  and  it  is 
meat  and  drink  to  him  to  read  a  Preface.  The 
author  should  recognize  this  fact ;  he  should  ac 
cept  the  altered  conditions  of  the  Preface.  Con 
sider  for  a  moment  what  the  Preface  was,  what  it 
is  now,  and  what  it  should  be.  It  was  addressed 
to  the  reader,  who  read  it  rarely.  It  is  now,  as 
we  have  seen  above,  anything  or  nothing,  some- 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.    6l 

times  absent,  often  artless,  seldom  apt.  It  should 
be  a  private  letter  from  the  author  to  the  critic 
indicating  the  lines  upon  which  he  (the  author) 
would  like  him  (the  critic)  to  frame  an  opinion  and 
to  declare  a  judgment.  A  good  Preface  is  like 
the  trick  modern  magicians  use,  when,  under  pre 
tence  of  giving  us  free  choice,  they  force  us  to 
draw  the  card  they  have  already  determined  upon. 
So  if  a  book  have  a  proper  Preface,  contrived  with 
due  art,  the  critic  cannot  choose  but  write  about  it 
as  the  author  wishes.  A  master  of  the  craft  will 
blow  his  own  horn  in  the  Preface  of  his  book  so 
skilfully  and  so  unobtrusively  that  only  a  faint 
echo  shall  linger  in  the  ear  of  the  critic,  iterating 
and  reiterating  the  Leit-Motiv  of  self-praise  until 
the  charmed  reviewer  repeats  it  unconsciously. 

Of  course  it  is  not  easy  for  a  gentleman  to  praise 
himself  publicly  as  he  feels  he  deserves  to  be 
praised.  The  pleasantest  and  most  profitable 
Preface  for  the  beginner  in  book-making  is  the  in 
troduction  by  one  of  the  acknowledged  leaders  of 
literature.  Then,  by  a  strange  reversal  of  custom, 
it  is  the  celebrity  who  waits  at  the  door  like  an 
usher  to  declare  the  titles  of  the  young  man  who 
is  about  to  cross  the  threshold  for  the  first  time. 
Thus  the  young  author  has  granted  to  him  a  pass 
port  by  which  he  may  gain  admittance  where  else 


62  PEN  AND  INK. 

he  might  not  enter.  Jules  Janin  was  a  master- 
hand  at  the  issuing  of  these  introductory  letters  of 
credit ;  he  was  easy  and  good-natured,  and  rarely 
or  never  did  he  refuse  a  novice  the  alms  of  a  Pref 
ace.  Janin  had  the  ear  of  the  public,  and  he  liked 
to  lead  the  public  by  the  ear.  Perhaps,  too,  he 
liked  the  opportunity  of  using  his  high  praise  of 
the  new-comer  slyly  to  deal  a  blow  between  the 
ribs  or  under  the  belt  of  some  old  favorite  whose 
reputation  came  between  him  and  the  sun.  He 
who  makes  the  Preface  to  another's  book  stands 
on  a  vantage-ground  and  is  free  from  responsi 
bility  ;  he  may  classify  under  heads  the  things  that 
he  hates,  and  then,  in  accordance  with  the  precept 
and  the  practice  of  Donnybrook,  hit  a  head  where- 
ever  he  sees  it.  Truly  a  man  may  wish,  "  O  that 
mine  enemy  would  let  me  write  his  Preface ! 
Could  I  not  damn  with  faint  praise  and  stab  with 
sharp  insinuendo?  " — to  use  the  labor-saving  and 
much-needed  word  thoughtlessly  invented  by  the 
sable  legislator  of  South  Carolina. 

The  Preface  by  another  hand  is  often  a  pleasant 
device  for  the  display  of  international  courtesy. 
Merimee  introduced  Turgenef  to  the  Parisians.  In 
the  United  States  an  English  author  may  be  pre 
sented  to  the  public  by  an  American  celebrity,  and 
in  Great  Britain  an  American  book  may  be  pub- 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.          63 

lished  with  a  voucher  of  its  orthodoxy  signed  by  a 
dignitary  of  the  Church.  The  exalted  friend  of  the 
author  who  provides  the  introduction,  if  he  be  but 
a  true  friend,  may  praise  far  more  highly  than  even 
the  wiliest  author  would  dare  to  praise  himself. 
If  he  understands  the  obligation  of  his  position  and 
does  his  duty,  he  should  blare  the  trumpet  boldly 
and  bang  the  big-drum  mightily,  and  bid  the 
whole  world  walk  up  and  see  the  show  which  is 
just  about  to  begin.  Even  if  the  public  be  dull 
and  laggard  and  refuse  to  be  charmed,  the  author 
has  at  least  the  signal  satisfaction  for  once  in  his 
life  of  hearing  his  effort  properly  appreciated  at  its 
exact  value.  If  by  any  chance  he  is  a  truly  modest 
man  —  a  rare  bird  indeed,  a  white  black-bird — he 
may  have  some  slight  qualms  of  conscience  on 
seeing  himself  over-praised  in  the  pages  of  his  own 
book.  But  these  qualms  are  subdued  easily 
enough  for  the  most  part.  "I  never  saw  an 
author  in  my  life  —  saving  perhaps  one,"  says  the 
Autocrat,  "that  did  not  purr  as  audibly  as  a  full- 
grown  domestic  cat  on  having  his  fur  smoothed 
the  right  way  by  a  skilful  hand." 

In  default  of  a  friend  speaking  as  one  having 
authority,  the  author  must  perforce  write  his  own 
Preface  and  declare  his  own  surpassing  virtues. 
The  old-fashioned  Preface,  inscribed  to  the  Gentle 


64  PEN  AND  INK. 

Reader  of  the  vague  and  doubtful  past,  often  failed 
to  reach  its  address.  The  Preface  of  the  new 
school,  constructed  according  to  the  true  theory, 
is  intended  solely  for  the  critic.  Now,  the  critic  is 
the  very  reverse  of  the  Gentle  Reader,  and  he 
must  be  addressed  accordingly.  He  studies  the 
Preface  carefully  to  see  what  bits  he  can  chip  away 
to  help  build  his  own  review.  "  A  good  Preface 
is  as  essential  to  put  the  reader  into  good  humor 
as  a  good  prologue  to  a  play,"  so  the  author  of  the 
'Curiosities  of  Literature' tells  us;  but  nowadays 
our  plays  have  no  prologues,  and  it  is  the  critic 
whom  the  Preface  must  put  into  good  humor. 
Now,  the  critic  is  not  the  ogre  he  is  often  repre 
sented  ;  he  is  a  man  like  ourselves,  a  man  having 
to  earn  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  a  man 
often  over-worked  and  often  bound  down  to  a  dis- 
tastefultask.  He  is  quick  to  takea  hint.  Forhisbene- 
fit  the  Preface  should  fairly  bristle  with  hints.  The 
Preface  should  insinuate  adroitly  that  the  book  it  pre 
cedes  is  —  in  the  choice  phrase  of  the  advertise 
ment — "a  felt-want  filled."  This  need  not  be  done 
brutally  and  nakedly.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  bet 
ter  to  lead  the  mind  of  the  critic  by  easy  steps. 
Dwell  on  the  importance  of  the  subject,  and  de 
clare  that  in  the  present  work  it  has  been  regarded 
for  the  first  time  from  a  new  and  particular  point 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.          65 

of  view.  Point  out,  modestly  but  firmly,  the 
special  advantages  which  the  author  has  enjoyed, 
and  which  make  him  an  authority  on  the  subject. 
Casually  let  drop,  in  quotation  marks,  a  few  words 
of  high  praise  once  addressed  to  the  author  by  a 
great  man,  now  no  longer  with  us,  and  trust  that 
you  have  done  all  in  your  power  to  merit  such 
gratifying  encomiums.  You  may  even  venture  to 
intimate  that  although  you  cannot  expect  the  pro 
fane  vulgar  to  see  the  transcendent  merit  of  your 
work,  yet  the  favored  few  of  keener  insight  will 
recognize  it  at  once :  flattery  is  a  legal-tender  with 
out  Act  of  Congress,  and  the  critic  accepts  it  as 
readily,  perhaps,  as  the  author.  The  critic  is  only 
a  fellow  human  being  after  all,  and  like  the  rest  of 
our  fellow  human  beings  he  is  quite  ready  to  take 
us  at  our  own  valuation.  Hold  the  head  up;  look 
the  world  in  the  eye ;  and  he  is  a  churlish  critic 
who  does  not  at  least  treat  you  with  respect. 

But  if  the  Preface  is  weak  in  tone,  if  it  is  nerve 
less,  if  it  is  apologetic,  then  the  critic  takes  the 
author  at  his  word  and  has  a  poor  opinion  of  him, 
and  expresses  that  opinion  in  plain  language.  If 
you  throw  yourself  on  the  mercy  of  the  court,  the 
critic  gives  you  at  once  the  full  penalty  of  the 
law.  Confess  a  lamb  and  the  critic  hangs  you 
for  a  sheep.  Give  him  but  five  lines  of  Preface 


66  PEN  AND  INK. 

and  he  can  damn  any  book.  Acknowledge  any 
obligation,  however  slight,  and  the  critic  pounces 
upon  it ;  and  your  character  for  originality  is  lost. 
Every  admission  will  be  used  against  you.  He  be 
lieves  that  you  undervalue  your  indebtedness  to 
others  ;  and  if  you  rashly  call  his  attention  to  it,  he 
tries  to  balance  the  account  by  overstating  your 
debt.  I  know  an  author  who  had  studied  a  sub 
ject  for  years,  contributing  from  time  to  time  to 
periodicals  an  occasional  paper  on  certain  of  its 
sub-divisions,  until  at  last  he  was  ready  to  write 
his  book  about  it ;  his  honesty  moved  him  to  say 
in  the  Preface  of  the  volume  that  he  had  made  use 
of  articles  in  certain  magazines  and  reviews.  He 
did  not  specifically  declare  that  these  articles  were 
his  own  work,  and  so  one  critic  called  the  book  "a 
compilation  from  recent  periodical  literature,"  leav 
ing  the  reader  to  infer  that  the  author  had  been 
caught  decking  himself  out  in  borrowed  plumes. 
Two  friends  of  the  same  author  kindly  consented 
to  read  the  proof-sheets  of  another  of  his  books  ; 
and  in  the  Preface  thereof  he  thanked  them  by 
name  for  "  the  invaluable  aid  they  have  kindly 
given  me  in  the  preparation  of  these  pages  for  the 
press."  One  critic  took  advantage  of  this  acknowl 
edgment  to  credit  the  two  friends  with  a  material 
share  in  the  work  of  which  they  had  only  read  the 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.          67 

proof.  The  author  of  that  remarkable  book,  the 
'  Story  of  a  Country  Town,'  wrote  a  most  pathetic 
Preface,  a  cry  of  doubt  wrung  from  his  heart ;  and 
there  was  scarcely  a  single  favorable  review  of 
the  volume  the  praise  of  which  had  not  been 
dampened  by  the  Preface. 

The  only  safe  rule  is  resolutely  to  set  forth  the 
merits  of  the  book  in  the  Preface,  and  to  be  silent 
as  to  its  faults.  Do  not  apologize  for  anything. 
Confess  nothing.  If  there  are  omissions,  pride 
yourself  on  them.  If  the  book  has  an  inevitable 
defect,  boast  of  it.  A  man  has  the  qualities  of  his 
faults,  says  the  French  maxim  ;  in  a  Preface,  a  man 
must  defiantly  set  up  his  faults  as  qualities.  Of 
course  this  needs  to  be  done  with  the  greatest 
skill ;  and  it  is  seen  in  perfection  only  in  the  Pref 
aces  of  those  who  have  both  taste  and  tact,  and 
who  combine  a  masculine  vigor  of  handling  with 
a  feminine  delicacy  of  touch.  Anybody  can  write 
a  book, —  as  I  have  said  already, — but  only  a  man 
singularly  gifted  by  nature  and  richly  cultivated  by 
art  can  write  a  Preface  as  it  ought  to  be  written. 

If  common  decency  requires  absolutely  that  the 
author  confess  something,  an  indebtedness  to  a 
predecessor,  or  the  like,  even  then  this  confession 
must  not  encumber  and  disfigure  the  Preface. 
Dismiss  the  thought  of  the  confession  wholly  from 


68  PEN  AND  INK. 

your  mind  while  you  are  composing  the  Preface. 
Then  declare  your  indebtedness  and  avow  any  of 
the  seven  deadly  sins  of  which  you  may  have  been 
guilty  —  in  a  note,  in  a  modest  and  unobtrusive 
little  note,  either  at  the  end  of  the  book  or  at  the 
bottom  of  the  page.  The  critic  always  reads  the 
Preface,  but  only  a  man  really  interested  in  the 
subject  ever  digs  into  a  note.  A  foot-note,  lurking 
shyly  in  fine  type,  is  perhaps  the  best  place  for  a 
man  to  confess  his  sins  in.  And  yet  there  is  a 
great  advantage  in  postponing  the  bad  quarter  of 
an  hour  as  long  as  possible  —  that  is  to  say,  to  the 
very  end  of  the  book.  When  the  aspiring  drama 
tist  brought  his  tragedy  to  Sheridan  as  the  mana 
ger  of  Drury  Lane,  he  said  that  he  had  written  the 
prologue  himself  and  he  had  ventured  to  hope  that 
perhaps  Mr.  Sheridan  would  favor  him  with  an 
epilogue.  "An  epilogue,  my  dear  sir,"  cried 
Sheridan  ;  "it  will  never  come  to  that !  " 

In  talking  over  the  true  theory  of  the  Preface 
with  friends  engaged  in  other  trades  than  that  of 
letters,  I  have  found  that  the  same  principle  ob 
tains  elsewhere.  A  learned  professor  told  me  that 
he  never  declared  the  limitations  of  his  course  in 
his  first  lecture  ;  he  preferred  to  begin  by  getting 
the  attention  of  the  students  ;  when  he  had  once 
acquired  this,  why,  then  he  found  occasion  casu- 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.    69 

ally  in  the  second  or  third,  or  even  the  fourth 
lecture,  to  let  his  hearers  know,  as  if  by  accident, 
just  what  bounds  he  proposed  to  set  to  his  dis 
course.  The  case  of  the  dramatist  is  even  harder, 
for  an  acknowledgment  of  any  kind  printed  in  the 
playbill,  before  the  curtain  rises  on  the  first  act  for 
the  first  time,  is  more  dangerous  than  the  most 
apologetic  Preface.  Dramatists  have  always 
availed  themselves  of  the  royal  privilege  of  prig 
ging —  or,  if  this  sound  unseemly,  let  us  say,  of 
taking  their  goods  wherever  they  found  them.  So 
many  playwrights  have  presented  as  new  and 
original  plays  which  were  neither  new  nor  original, 
that  critics  are  wary  and  suspicious.  They  are 
inclined  to  believe  the  worst  of  their  fellow-man 
when  he  has  written  a  play :  after  all,  as  M.  Thiers 
said,  it  is  so  easy  not  to  write  a  tragedy  in  five 
acts.  But  if  a  man  has  written  a  tragedy  in  five 
acts  or  a  comedy  in  three,  if  a  man  is  an  honest 
man,  and  if  he  is  under  some  trifling  obligations 
to  some  forgotten  predecessor,  what  is  he  to  do  ? 
The  critics  are  sure  to  suppose  that  the  author  has 
understated  his  indebtedness.  If  he  say  he  took  a 
hint  for  a  scene  or  a  character  from  Schiller  or  Sir 
Walter  Scott  or  Alexandre  Dumas,  the  critics  are 
likely  to  record  that  the  play  is  derived  from 
Schiller,  or  Scott,  or  Dumas.  If  he  say  his  plot 


TO  PEN  AND  INK. 

was  suggested  by  a  part  of  an  old  play,  they  are 
likely  to  set  it  down  as  founded  on  the  old  play. 
If  he  confess  that  his  piece  is  remotely  based  on 
another  in  a  foreign  tongue,  they  call  it  an  adapta 
tion.  And  if  he,  in  the  excess  of  his  honesty,  pre 
sents  his  play  humbly  as  an  adaptation,  they  go  a 
step  farther  and  accept  it  as  a  translation,  and  are 
even  capable  of  finding  fault  with  it  because  it 
does  not  exactly  reproduce  the  original.  If  Mr. 
Pinero,  when  in  his  charming  comedy,  the 
'  Squire,'  he  sought  to  bring  the  scent  of  the  hay 
across  the  footlights,  had  made  an  allusion  to  Mr. 
Hardy's  story,  not  a  few  dramatic  critics  would 
have  called  the  play  an  adaptation  of  the  story  — 
which  it  was  not.  It  is  impossible  for  the  drama 
tist  to  frame  an  acknowledgment  which  shall 
declare  with  mathematical  precision  his  indebted 
ness  to  any  given  predecessor  for  a  bit  of  color, 
for  a  vague  suggestion  of  character,  for  a  stray  hint 
of  a  situation,  or  for  a  small  but  pregnant  knot  of 
man  and  motive.  It  cannot  be  set  down  in  plain 
figures.  Unfortunately  for  him  who  writes  for 
the  stage,  the  playbill  which  everybody  reads 
is  the  only  Preface ;  and  there  are  no  foot-notes 
possible.  The  dramatist  has  to  confess  his  obliga 
tion  at  the  very  worst  moment,  or  else  forever 
after  hold  his  peace. 


THE  TRUE  THEORY  OF  THE  PREFACE.    71 

"A  Preface,  being  the  entrance  to  a  book, 
should  invite  by  its  beauty.  An  elegant  porch  an 
nounces  the  splendor  of  the  interior,"  said  the 
elder  Disraeli,  setting  forth  the  theory  of  the  Pref 
ace  as  it  was  in  the  past.  But  this  is  not  the  new 
and  true  theory  of  the  Preface,  which  should  be 
written  in  letters  of  gold  in  the  study  of  every 
maker  of  books  : — "If  you  want  to  have  your 
book  criticized  favorably,  give  yourself  a  good 
notice  in  the  Preface  !  "  This  is  the  true  theory, 
in  the  very  words  of  its  discoverer.  If  it  is  not  ab 
solutely  sound  and  water-tight,  it  is,  at  all  events, 
an  admirable  working  hypothesis.  Although  others 
had  had  faint  glimmerings  of  the  truth,  it  was  left 
for  a  friend  of  mine  to  formulate  it  finally  and  as  I 
have  given  it  here.  To  him  are  due  the  thanks  of 
all  makers  of  books  —  and  he  is  a  publisher. 

(1885) 


IV 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE 
SHORT-STORY 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY. 


F  it  chance  that  artists  fall  to  talking 
about  their  art,  it  is  the  critic's  place 
to  listen,  that  he  may  pick  up  a 
little  knowledge.  Of  late,  certain  of 
the  novelists  of  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  have  been  discussing  the  principles 
and  the  practice  of  the  art  of  writing  stories.  Mr. 
Howells  declared  his  warm  appreciation  of  Mr. 
Henry  James's  novels  ;  Mr.  Stevenson  made  public 
a  delightful  plea  for  Romance  ;  Mr.  Besant  lectured 
gracefully  on  the  Art  of  Fiction  ;  and  Mr.  James 
modestly  presented  his  views  by  way  of  supple 
ment  and  criticism.  The  discussion  took  a  wide 
range.  With  more  or  less  fulness  it  covered  the 
proper  aim  and  intent  of  the  novelist,  his  material 
and  his  methods,  his  success,  his  rewards,  social 
and  pecuniary,  and  the  morality  of  his  work  and 
of  his  art.  But,  with  all  its  extension,  the  discus 
sion  did  not  include  one  important  branch  of  the 
art  of  fiction  :  it  did  not  consider  at  all  the  minor 
art  of  the  Short-story.  Although  neither  Mr. 

75 


76  PEN  AND  INK. 

Howells  nor  Mr.  James,  Mr.  Besant  nor  Mr.  Ste 
venson  specifically  limited  his  remarks  to  those 
longer,  and,  in  the  picture  dealer's  sense  of  the 
word,  more  "  important,"  tales  known  as  Novels, 
and,  although,  of  course,  their  general  criticisms 
of  the  abstract  principles  of  the  art  of  fiction  ap 
plied  quite  as  well  to  the  Short-story  as  to  the 
Novel,  yet  all  their  concrete  examples  were  full- 
length  Novels,  and  the  Short-story,  as  such, 
received  no  recognition  at  all. 

The  difference  between  a  Novel  and  a  Novelette 
is  one  of  length  only :  a  Novelette  is  a  brief  Novel. 
But  the  difference  between  a  Novel  and  a  Short- 
story  is  a  difference  of  kind.  A  true  Short-story  is 
something  other  and  something  more  than  a  mere 
story  which  is  short.  A  true  Short-story  differs 
from  the  Novel  chiefly  in  its  essential  unity  of  im 
pression.  In  a  far  more  exact  and  precise  use  of 
the  word,  a  Short-story  has  unity  as  a  Novel  can 
not  have  it.  Often,  it  may  be  noted  by  the  way, 
the  Short-story  fulfils  the  three  false  unities  of  the 
French  classic  drama  :  it  shows  one  action  in  one 
place  on  one  day.  A  Short-story  deals  with  a  sin 
gle  character,  a  single  event,  a  single  emotion,  or 
the  series  of  emotions  called  forth  by  a  single  situ 
ation.  Poe's  paradox  that  a  poem  cannot  greatly 
exceed  a  hundred  lines  in  length  under  penalty  of 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.        77 

ceasing  to  be  one  poem  and  breaking  into  a  string 
of  poems,  may  serve  to  suggest  the  precise  differ 
ence  between  the  Short-story  and  the  Novel.  The 
Short-story  is  the  single  effect,  complete  and  self- 
contained,  while  the  Novel  is  of  necessity  broken 
into  a  series  of  episodes.  Thus  the  Short-story 
has,  what  the  Novel  cannot  have,  the  effect  of 
"totality,"  as  Poe  called  it,  the  unity  of  impres 
sion.  The  Short-story  is  not  only  not  a  chapter 
out  of  a  Novel,  or  an  incident  or  an  episode  ex 
tracted  from  a  longer  tale,  but  at  its  best  it  im 
presses  the  reader  with  the  belief  that  it  would  be 
spoiled  if  it  were  made  larger  or  if  it  were  incor 
porated  into  a  more  elaborate  work.  The  differ 
ence  in  spirit  and  in  form  between  the  Lyric  and 
the  Epic  is  scarcely  greater  than  the  difference 
between  the  Short-story  and  the  Novel ;  and  the 
'  Raven '  and  '  How  we  brought  the  good  news 
from  Ghent  to  Aix '  are  not  more  unlike  the  '  Lady 
of  the  Lake  '  and  '  Paradise  Lost,'  in  form  and  in 
spirit,  than  the  '  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp '  and  the 
'Man  without  a  Country,'  two  typical  Short- 
stories,  are  unlike  '  Vanity  Fair '  and  the  '  Heart 
of  Midlothian,'  two  typical  Novels. 

Another  great  difference  between  the  Short- 
story  and  the  Novel  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  Novel, 
nowadays  at  least,  must  be  a  love-tale,  while  the 


78  PEN  AND  INK. 

Short-story  need  not  deal  with  love  at  all.  Al 
though  '  Vanity  Fair '  was  a  Novel  without  a  Hero, 
nearly  every  other  Novel  has  a  hero  and  a  heroine, 
and  the  novelist,  however  unwillingly,  must  con 
cern  himself  in  their  love-affairs.  But  the  writer 
of  Short-stories  is  under  no  bonds  of  this  sort.  Of 
course  he  may  tell  a  tale  of  love  if  he  choose,  and  if 
love  enters  into  his  tale  naturally  and  to  its  enrich 
ing  ;  but  he  need  not  bother  with  love  at  all  unless 
he  please.  Some  of  the  best  of  Short-stories  are 
love-stories  too, — Mr.  Aldrich's  'Marjory  Daw' 
for  instance,  Mr.  Stimson's  '  Mrs.  Knollys , '  Mr. 
Bunner's  '  Love  in  Old  Cloathes ' ;  but  more  of 
them  are  not  love-stories  at  all.  If  we  were  to 
pick  out  the  ten  best  Short-stories,  I  think  we 
should  find  that  fewer  than  half  of  them  made  any 
mention  at  all  of  love.  In  the  '  Snow  Image '  and 
in  the  '  Ambitious  Guest,'  in  the  '  Gold  Bug '  and 
in  the  '  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, '  in  '  My  Double, 
and  how  he  Undid  me,'  in  '  Devil-Puzzlers,'  in  the 
'  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,'  in  '  Jean-ah  Poquelin,'  in 
'  A  Bundle  of  Letters,'  there  is  little  or  no  mention 
of  the  love  of  man  for  woman,  which  is  the  chief 
topic  of  conversation  in  a  Novel.  While  the 
Novel  cannot  get  on  without  love,  the  Short-story 
can.  Since  love  is  almost  the  only  thing  which 
will  give  interest  to  a  long  story,  the  writer  of 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       79 

Novels  has  to  get  love  into  his  tales  as  best  he 
may,  even  when  the  subject  rebels  and  when  he 
himself  is  too  old  to  take  any  interest  in  the 
mating  of  John  and  Joan.  But  the  Short-story, 
being  brief,  does  not  need  a  love-interest  to  hold 
its  parts  together,  and  the  writer  of  Short-stories 
has  thus  a  greater  freedom:  he  may  do  as  he 
pleases  ;  from  him  a  love-tale  is  not  expected. 

But  other  things  are  required  of  a  writer  of 
Short-stories  which  are  not  required  of  a  writer  of 
Novels.  The  novelist  may  take  his  time  :  he  has 
abundant  room  to  turn  about.  The  writer  of 
Short-stories  must  be  concise,  and  compression, 
a  vigorous  compression,  is  essential.  For  him, 
more  than  for  any  one  else,  the  half  is  more  than 
the  whole.  Again,  the  novelist  may  be  common 
place,  he  may  bend  his  best  energies  to  the  photo 
graphic  reproduction  of  the  actual ;  if  he  show  us 
a  cross  section  of  real  life  we  are  content ;  but  the 
writer  of  Short-stories  must  have  originality  and 
ingenuity.  If  to  compression,  originality,  and  in 
genuity  he  add  also  a  touch  of  fantasy,  so  much 
the  better.  It  may  be  said  that  no  one  has  ever 
succeeded  as  a  writer  of  Short-stories  who  had 
not  ingenuity,  originality,  and  compression,  and 
that  most  of  those  who  have  succeeded  in  this 
line  had  also  the  touch  of  fantasy.  But  there  are 


80  PEN  AND  INK. 

not  a  few  successful  novelists  lacking  not  only  in 
fantasy  and  compression,  but  also  in  ingenuity 
and  originality :  they  had  other  qualities,  no 
doubt,  but  these  they  had  not.  If  an  example 
must  be  given,  the  name  of  Anthony  Trollope  will 
occur  to  all.  Fantasy  was  a  thing  he  abhorred ; 
compression  he  knew  not ;  and  originality  and  in 
genuity  can  be  conceded  to  him  only  by  a  strong 
stretch  of  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  words. 
Other  qualities  he  had  in  plenty,  but  not  these. 
And,  not  having  them,  he  was  not  a  writer  of 
Short-stories.  Judging  from  his  essay  on  Haw 
thorne,  one  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that 
Trollope  did  not  know  a  good  Short-story  when 
he  saw  it. 

I  have  written  Short-story  with  a  capital  S  and 
a  hyphen  because  I  wished  to  emphasize  the  dis 
tinction  between  the  Short-story  and  the  story 
which  is  merely  short.  The  Short-story  is  a  high 
and  difficult  department  of  fiction.  The  story 
which  is  short  can  be  written  by  anybody  who 
can  write  at  all ;  and  it  may  be  good,  bad,  or  in 
different  ;  but  at  its  best  it  is  wholly  unlike  the 
Short-story.  In  '  An  Editor's  Tales '  Trollope  has 
given  us  excellent  specimens  of  the  story  which  is 
short ;  and  the  stories  which  make  up  this  book 
are  amusing  enough  and  clever  enough,  but  they 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.    8 1 

are  wanting  in  the  individuality  and  in  the  com 
pleteness  of  the  genuine  Short-story.  Like  the 
brief  tales  to  be  seen  in  the  English  monthly  mag 
azines  and  in  the  Sunday  editions  of  American 
newspapers  into  which  they  are  copied,  they  are, 
for  the  most  part,  either  merely  amplified  anec 
dotes  or  else  incidents  which  might  have  been 
used  in  a  Novel  just  as  well  as  not.  Now,  the 
genuine  Short-story  abhors  the  idea  of  the  Novel. 
It  can  be  conceived  neither  as  part  of  a  Novel  nor 
as  elaborated  and  expanded  so  as  to  form  a  Novel. 
A  good  Short-story  is  no  more  the  synopsis  of  a 
Novel  than  it  is  an  episode  from  a  Novel.  A  slight 
Novel,  or  a  Novel  cut  down,  is  a  Novelette  :  it  is 
not  a  Short-story.  Mr.  Howells's  '  Their  Wed 
ding  Journey '  and  Miss  Howard's  '  One  Sum 
mer'  are  Novelettes, — little  Novels.  Mr.  Anstey's 
'  Vice  Versa/  Mr.  Besant's  '  Case  of  Mr.  Lucraft/ 
Hugh  Con  way's  '  Called  Back,'  Mr.  Julian  Haw 
thorne's  'Archibald  Malmaison,'  and  Mr.  Steven 
son's  '  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde' 
are  Short-stories  in  conception,  although  they  are 
without  the  compression  which  the  Short-story 
requires.  In  the  acute  and  learned  essay  on  vers 
de  sodete  which  Mr.  Frederick  Locker  prefixed  to 
his  admirable  '  Lyra  Elegantiarum,'  he  declared 
that  the  two  characteristics  of  the  best  vers  de 

4* 


82  PEN  AND  INK. 

societe  were  brevity  and  brilliancy,  and  that  the 
'Rape  of  the  Lock'  would  be  the  type  and  model 
of  the  best  vers  de  societe — if  it  were  not  just  a 
little  too  long.  So  it  is  with  the  '  Case  of  Mr. 
Lucraft/  with  '  Vice  Versa/  with  'Archibald  Mal- 
maison ' :  they  are  just  a  little  too  long. 

It  is  to  be  noted  as  a  curious  coincidence  that 
there  is  no  exact  word  in  English  to  designate 
either  vers  de  societe  or  the  Short-story,  and  yet  in 
no  language  are  there  better  vers  de  societe  or 
Short-stories  than  in  English.  It  may  be  re 
marked  also  that  there  is  a  certain  likeness  be 
tween  vers  de  societe  and  Short-stories :  for  one 
thing,  both  seem  easy  to  write  and  are  hard. 
And  the  typical  qualifications  of  each  may  apply 
with  almost  equal  force  to  the  other:  vers  de 
societe  should  reveal  compression,  ingenuity,  and 
originality,  and  Short-stories  should  have  brevity 
and  brilliancy.  In  no  class  of  writing  are  neatness 
of  construction  and  polish  of  execution  more 
needed  than  in  the  writing  of  vers  de  societe  and 
of  Short-stories.  The  writer  of  Short-stories 
must  have  the  sense  of  form,  which  Mr.  Lathrop 
has  called  "the  highest  and  last  attribute  of  a 
creative  writer."  The  construction  must  be  logi 
cal,  adequate,  harmonious.  Here  is  the  weak 
spot  in  Mr.  Bishop's  '  One  of  the  Thirty  Pieces,' 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       $} 

the  fundamental  idea  of  which  has  extraordinary 
strength  perhaps  not  fully  developed  in  the  story. 
But  other  of  Mr.  Bishop's  stories — the  '  Battle  of 
Bunkerloo,'  for  instance  —  are  admirable  in  all 
ways,  conception  and  execution  having  an  even 
excellence.  Again,  Hugh  Conway's  '  Daughter 
of  the  Stars'  is  a  Short-story  which  fails  from 
sheer  deficiency  of  style  :  here  is  one  of  the  very 
finest  Short-story  ideas  ever  given  to  mortal  man, 
but  the  handling  is  at  best  barely  sufficient.  To 
do  justice  to  the  conception  would  task  the  execu 
tion  of  a  poet.  We  can  merely  wonder  what  the 
tale  would  have  been  had  it  occurred  to  Haw 
thorne,  to  Poe,  or  to  Theophile  Gautier.  An  idea 
logically  developed  by  one  possessing  the  sense  of 
form  and  the  gift  of  style  is  what  we  look  for  in 
the  Short-story. 

But,  although  the  sense  of  form  and  the  gift  of 
style  are  essential  to  the  writing  of  a  good  Short- 
story,  they  are  secondary  to  the  idea,  to  the  con 
ception,  to  the  subject.  Those  who  hold,  with  a 
certain  American  novelist,  that  it  is  no  matter  what 
you  have  to  say,  but  only  how  you  say  it,  need  not 
attempt  the  Short-story ;  for  the  Short-story,  far 
more  than  the  Novel  even,  demands  a  subject. 
The  Short-story  is  nothing  if  there  is  no  story  to 
tell.  The  Novel,  so  Mr.  James  told  us  not  long 


84  PEN  AND  INK. 

ago,  "is,  in  its  broadest  definition,  a  personal  im 
pression  of  life."  The  most  powerful  force  in 
French  fiction  to-day  is  M.  Emile  Zola,  chiefly 
known  in  America  and  England,  I  fear  me  greatly, 
by  the  dirt  which  masks  and  degrades  the  real 
beauty  and  firm  strength  not  seldom  concealed  in 
his  novels ;  and  M.  Emile  Zola  declares  that  the 
novelist  of  the  future  will  not  concern  himself 
with  the  artistic  evolution  of  a  plot :  he  will  take 
une  bistoire  quelconque,  any  kind  of  a  story,  and 
make  it  serve  his  purpose, — which  is  to  give  elab 
orate  pictures  of  life  in  all  its  most  minute  details. 
The  acceptance  of  these  theories  is  a  negation 
of  the  Short-story.  Important  as  are  form  and 
style,  the  subject  of  the  Short-story  is  of  more  im 
portance  yet.  What  you  have  to  tell  is  of  greater 
interest  than  how  you  tell  it.  I  once  heard  a 
clever  American  novelist  pour  sarcastic  praise 
upon  another  American  novelist, — for  novelists, 
even  American  novelists,  do  not  always  dwell  to 
gether  in  unity.  The  subject  of  the  eulogy  is  the 
chief  of  those  who  have  come  to  be  known  as  the 
International  Novelists,  and  he  was  praised  be 
cause  he  had  invented  and  made  possible  a  fifth 
plot.  Hitherto,  declared  the  eulogist,  only  four 
terminations  of  a  novel  have  been  known  to  the 
most  enthusiastic  and  untiring  student  of  fiction. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       85 

First,  they  are  married ;  or,  second,  she  marries 
some  one  else ;  or,  thirdly,  he  marries  some  one 
else ;  or,  fourthly,  and  lastly,  she  dies.  Now, 
continued  the  panegyrist,  a  fifth  termination 
has  been  shown  to  be  practicable :  they  are  not 
married,  she  does  not  die,  he  does  not  die,  and 
nothing  happens  at  all.  As  a  Short-story  need 
not  be  a  love-story,  it  is  of  no  consequence  at  all 
whether  they  marry  or  die  ;  but  a  Short-story  in 
which  nothing  happens  at  all  is  an  absolute  im 
possibility. 

Perhaps  the  difference  between  a  Short-story 
and  a  Sketch  can  best  be  indicated  by  saying  that, 
while  a  Sketch  may  be  still-life,  in  a  Short-story 
something  always  happens.  A  Sketch  may  be  an 
outline  of  character,  or  even  a  picture  of  a  mood 
of  mind,  but  in  a  Short-story  there  must  be  some 
thing  done,  there  must  be  an  action.  Yet  the 
distinction,  like  that  between  the  Novel  and  the 
Romance,  is  no  longer  of  vital  importance.  In  the 
preface  to  the  '  House  of  the  Seven  Gables,'  Haw 
thorne  sets  forth  the  difference  between  the  Novel 
and  the  Romance,  and  claims  for  himself  the  priv 
ileges  of  the  romancer.  Mr.  Henry  James  fails  to 
see  this  difference.  The  fact  is,  that  the  Short- 
story  and  the  Sketch,  the  Novel  and  the  Romance, 
melt  and  merge  one  into  the  other,  and  no  man 


86  PEN  AND  INK. 

may  mete  the  boundaries  of  each,  though  their 
extremes  lie  far  apart.  With  the  more  complete 
understanding  of  the  principle  of  development  and 
evolution  in  literary  art,  as  in  physical  nature,  we 
see  the  futility  of  a  strict  and  rigid  classification 
into  precisely  defined  genera  and  species.  All  that 
is  needful  for  us  to  remark  now  is  that  the  Short- 
story  has  limitless  possibilities  :  it  may  be  as  real 
istic  as  the  most  prosaic  novel,  or  as  fantastic  as 
the  most  ethereal  romance. 

As  a  touch  of  fantasy,  however  slight,  is  a  wel 
come  ingredient  in  a  Short-story,  and  as  the  Amer 
ican  takes  more  thought  of  things  unseen  than  the 
Englishman,  we  may  have  here  an  incomplete  ex 
planation  of  the  superiority  of  the  American  Short- 
story  over  the  English.  "John  Bull  has  suffered 
the  idea  of  the  Invisible  to  be  very  much  fattened 
out  of  him,"  says  Mr.  Lowell:  "Jonathan  is  con 
scious  still  that  he  lives  in  the  World  of  the 
Unseen  as  well  as  of  the  Seen."  It  is  not  enough 
to  catch  a  ghost  white-handed  and  to  hale  him 
into  the  full  glare  of  the  electric  light.  A  brutal 
misuse  of  the  supernatural  is  perhaps  the  very 
lowest  degradation  of  the  art  of  fiction.  But  "  to 
mingle  the  marvellous  rather  as  a  slight,  delicate, 
and  evanescent  flavor  than  as  any  actual  portion 
of  the  substance,"  to  quote  from  the  preface  to 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       87 

the  *  House  of  the  Seven  Gables/  this  is,  or  should 
be,  the  aim  of  the  writer  of  Short-stories  when 
ever  his  feet  leave  the  firm  ground  of  fact  as  he 
strays  in  the  unsubstantial  realms  of  fantasy.  In 
no  one's  writings  is  this  better  exemplified  than 
in  Hawthorne's ;  not  even  in  Poe's.  There  is  a 
propriety  in  Hawthorne's  fantasy  to  which  Poe 
could  not  attain.  Hawthorne's  effects  are  moral 
where  Poe's  are  merely  physical.  The  situation 
and  its  logical  development  and  the  effects  to  be 
got  out  of  it  are  all  Poe  thinks  of.  In  Hawthorne 
the  situation,  however  strange  and  weird,  is 
only  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward 
and  spiritual  struggle.  Ethical  consequences  are 
always  worrying  Hawthorne's  soul :  but  Poe  did 
not  know  that  there  were  any  ethics. 

There  are  literary  evolutionists  who,  in  their 
whim  of  seeing  in  every  original  writer  a  copy  of 
some  predecessor,  have  declared  that  Hawthorne 
is  derived  from  Tieck,  and  Poe  from  Hoffmann, 
just  as  Dickens  modelled  himself  on  Smollett  and 
Thackeray  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Fielding. 
In  all  four  cases  the  pupil  surpassed  the  mas 
ter, — if  haply  Tieck  and  Hoffmann  can  be  consid 
ered  as  even  remotely  the  masters  of  Hawthorne 
and  Poe.  When  Coleridge  was  told  that  Klopstock 
was  the  German  Milton,  he  assented  with  the  dry 


88  PEN  AND  INK. 

addendum,  "A  very  German  Milton."  So  is 
Hoffmann  a  very  German  Poe,  and  Tieck  a  very 
German  Hawthorne.  Of  a  truth,  both  Poe  and 
Hawthorne  are  as  American  as  any  one  can  be.  If 
the  adjective  American  has  any  meaning  at  all,  it 
qualifies  Poe  and  Hawthorne.  They  were  Ameri 
can  to  the  core.  They  both  revealed  the  curious 
sympathy  with  Oriental  moods  of  thought  which 
is  often  an  American  characteristic.  Poe,  with  his 
cold  logic  and  his  mathematical  analysis,  and  Haw 
thorne,  with  his  introspective  conscience  and  his 
love  of  the  subtile  and  the  invisible,  are  repre 
sentative  of  phases  of  American  character  not  to 
be  mistaken  by  any  one  who  has  given  thought 
to  the  influence  of  nationality. 

As  to  which  of  the  two  was  the  greater,  discus 
sion  is  idle,  but  that  Hawthorne  was  the  finer 
genius  few  would  deny.  Poe,  as  cunning  an 
artificer  of  goldsmith's  work,  and  as  adroit  in  its 
vending  as  was  ever  M.  Josse,  declared  that 
"Hawthorne's  distinctive  trait  is  invention,  crea 
tion,  imagination,  originality, — a  trait  which  in 
the  literature  of  fiction  is  positively  worth  all  the 
rest."  But  with  the  moral  basis  of  Hawthorne's 
work,  which  had  flowered  in  the  crevices  and 
crannies  of  New  England  Puritanism,  Poe  did  not 
concern  himself.  In  Poe's  hands  the  story  of  the 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.        89 

'  Ambitious  Guest '  might  have  thrilled  us  with  a 
more  powerful  horror,  but  it  would  have  lacked 
the  ethical  beauty  which  Hawthorne  gave  it  and 
which  makes  it  significant  beyond  a  mere  feat  of 
verbal  legerdemain.  And  the  subtile  simplicity  of 
the  '  Great  Stone  Face '  is  as  far  from  Poe  as  the 
pathetic  irony  of  the  '  Ambitious  Guest.'  In  all 
his  most  daring  fantasies  Hawthorne  is  natural, 
and,  though  he  may  project  his  vision  far  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  fact,  nowhere  does  he  violate 
the  laws  of  nature.  He  had  at  all  times  a  whole 
some  simplicity,  and  he  never  showed  any  trace 
of  the  morbid  taint  which  characterizes  nearly  all 
Poe's  work.  Hawthorne,  one  may  venture  to 
say,  had  the  broad  sanity  of  genius,  while  we 
should  understand  any  one  who  might  declare 
that  Poe  had  mental  disease  raised  to  the  wth. 

Although  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  fiery 
and  tumultuous  rush  of  a  volcano,  which  may  be 
taken  to  typify  Poe,  is  as  powerful  or  impressive 
in  the  end  as  the  calm  and  inevitable  progression 
of  a  glacier,  to  which,  for  the  purposes  of  this 
comparison  only,  we  may  liken  Hawthorne,  yet 
the  effect  and  influence  of  Poe's  work  are  indis 
putable.  One  might  hazard  the  assertion  that  in 
all  Latin  countries  he  is  the  best  known  of  Ameri 
can  authors.  Certainly  no  American  writer  has 


90  PEN  AND  INK. 

been  as  widely  accepted  in  France.  Nothing  bet* 
ter  of  its  kind  has  ever  been  done  than  the  '  Pit 
and  the  Pendulum,'  or  than  the  'Fall  of  the  House 
of  Usher,'  which  Mr.  Stoddard  has  compared  re 
cently  with  Browning's  '  Childe  Roland  to  the 
Dark  Tower  came'  for  its  power  of  suggesting 
intellectual  desolation.  Nothing  better  of  its  kind 
has  ever  been  done  than  the  'Gold  Bug,'  or  than 
the  'Purloined  Letter,'  or  than  the  'Murders  in 
the  Rue  Morgue.'  This  last,  indeed,  is  a  story  of 
marvellous  skill :  it  was  the  first  of  its  kind,  and 
to  this  day  it  remains  a  model,  not  only  unsur 
passed,  but  unapproachable.  It  was  the  first  of 
detective  stories ;  and  it  has  had  thousands  of  imi 
tations  and  no  rival.  The  originality,  the  ingenu 
ity,  the  verisimilitude  of  this  tale  and  of  its  fellows 
are  beyond  all  praise.  Poe  had  a  faculty  which 
one  may  call  imaginative  ratiocination  to  a  degree 
beyond  all  other  writers  of  fiction.  He  did  not  at 
all  times  keep  up  to  the  high  level,  in  one  style, 
of  the  *  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,'  and  in  another 
of  the  '  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue/  and  it  was 
not  to  be  expected  that  he  should.  Only  too 
often  did  he  sink  to  the  grade  of  the  ordinary 
'Tale  from  Blackwood,'  which  he  himself  satir 
ized  in  his  usual  savage  vein  of  humor.  Yet  even 
in  his  flimsiest  and  most  tawdry  tales  we  see  the 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       91 

truth  of  Mr.  Lowell's  assertion  that  Poe  had  "  two 
of  the  prime  qualities  of  genius, — a  faculty  of 
vigorous  yet  minute  analysis,  and  a  wonderful 
fecundity  of  imagination."  Mr.  Lowell  said  also 
that  Poe  combined  "  in  a  very  remarkable  manner 
two  faculties  which  are  seldom  found  united, — a 
power  of  influencing  the  mind  of  the  reader  by 
the  impalpable  shadows  of  mystery  and  a  minute 
ness  of  detail  which  does  not  leave  a  pin  or  a 
button  unnoticed.  Both  are,  in  truth,  the  natural 
results  of  the  predominating  quality  of  his  mind, 
to  which  we  have  before  alluded, — analysis."  In 
Poe's  hands,  however,  the  enumeration  of  pins 
and  buttons,  the  exact  imitation  of  the  prosaic 
facts  of  humdrum  life  in  this  workaday  world,  is 
not  an  end,  but  a  means  only,  whereby  he  con 
structs  and  intensifies  the  shadow  of  mystery 
which  broods  over  the  things  thus  realistically 
portrayed. 

With  the  recollection  that  it  is  more  than  half  a 
century  since  Hawthorne  and  Poe  wrote  their  best 
Short-stories,  it  is  not  a  little  comic  to  see  now 
and  again  in  American  newspapers  a  rash  asser 
tion  that  "American  literature  has  hitherto  been 
deficient  in  good  Short-stories,"  or  the  reckless 
declaration  that  "the  art  of  writing  Short-stories 
has  not  hitherto  been  cultivated  in  the  United 


92  PEN  AND  INK. 

States."  Nothing  could  be  more  inexact  than 
these  statements.  Almost  as  soon  as  America 
began  to  have  any  literature  at  all  it  had  good 
Short-stories.  It  is  quite  within  ten,  or  at  the 
most  twenty,  years  that  the  American  novel  has 
come  to  the  front  and  forced  the  acknowledgment 
of  its  equality  with  the  English  novel  and  the 
French  novel ;  but  for  fifty  years  the  American 
Short-story  has  had  a  supremacy  which  any  com 
petent  critic  could  not  but  acknowledge.  Indeed, 
the  present  excellence  of  the  American  novel  is 
due  in  great  measure  to  the  Short-story ;  for  nearly 
every  one  of  the  American  novelists  whose  works 
are  now  read  by  the  whole  English-speaking  race 
began  as  a  writer  of  Short-stories.  Although  as 
a  form  of  fiction  the  Short-story  is  not  inferior 
to  the  Novel,  and  although  it  is  not  easier,  all 
things  considered,  yet  its  brevity  makes  its  com 
position  simpler  for  the  'prentice  hand.  Though 
the  Short-stories  of  the  beginner  may  not  be 
good,  yet  in  the  writing  of  Short-stories  he  shall 
learn  how  to  tell  a  story,  he  shall  discover  by  ex 
perience  the  elements  of  the  art  of  fiction  more 
readily  and,  above  all,  more  quickly  than  if  he  had 
begun  on  a  long  and  exhausting  novel.  The 
physical  strain  of  writing  a  full-sized  novel  is  far 
greater  than  the  reader  can  well  imagine.  To  this 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       93 

strain  the  beginner  in  fiction  may  gradually  accus 
tom  himself  by  the  composition  of  Short-stories. 

(Here,  if  the  digression  may  be  pardoned,  occa 
sion  serves  to  say  that  if  our  writers  of  plays  had 
the  same  chance  that  our  writers  of  novels  have, 
we  might  now  have  a  school  of  American  drama 
tists  of  which  we  should  be  as  proud  as  of  our 
school  of  American  novelists.  In  dramatic  com 
position,  the  equivalent  of  the  Short-story  is  the 
one-act  play,  be  it  drama  or  comedy  or  comedietta 
or  farce.  As  the  novelists  have  learned  their  trade 
by  the  writing  of  Short-stories,  so  the  dramatists 
might  learn  their  trade,  far  more  difficult  as  it  is 
and  more  complicated,  by  the  writing  of  one-act 
plays.  But,  while  the  magazines  of  the  United 
States  are  hungry  for  good  Short-stories,  and  sift 
carefully  all  that  are  sent  to  them,  in  the  hope  of 
happening  on  a  treasure,  the  theatres  of  the 
United  States  are  closed  to  one-act  plays,  and  the 
dramatist  is  denied  the  opportunity  of  making  a 
humble  and  tentative  beginning.  The  conditions 
of  the  theatre  are  such  that  there  is  little  hope  of  a 
change  for  the  better  in  this  respect, —  more's  the 
pity.  The  manager  has  a  tradition  that  a  ' '  broken 
bill,"  a  programme  containing  more  than  one 
play,  is  a  confession  of  weakness,  and  he  prefers, 
so  far  as  possible,  to  keep  his  weakness  concealed.) 


94  PEN  AND  INK. 

When  we  read  the  roll  of  American  novelists, 
we  see  that  nearly  all  of  them  began  as  writers  of 
Short-stories.  Some  of  them,  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  for 
instance,  and  Mr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  never  got 
any  farther,  or,  at  least,  if  they  wrote  novels, 
their  novels  did  not  receive  the  full  artistic  appre 
ciation  and  popular  approval  bestowed  on  their 
Short-stories.  Even  Mr.  Cable's  <  Grandissimes ' 
has  not  made  his  readers  forget  his  '  Posson  Jone,' 
nor  has  Mr.  Aldrich's  '  Queen  of  Sheba,'  charming 
as  she  was,  driven  from  our  memory  his  '  Marjory 
Daw,'  as  delightful  and  as  captivating  as  that  other 
non-existent  heroine,  Mr.  Austin  Dobson's  '  Doro 
thy.'  Mrs.  Burnett,  Miss  Woolson,  and  Miss  Mur- 
free  put  forth  volumes  of  Short-stories  before  they 
attempted  the  more  sustained  flight  of  the  full- 
fledged  Novel.  Miss  Jewett,  Mr.  Bunner,  Mr. 
Bishop,  and  Mr.  Julian  Hawthorne  wrote  Short- 
stories  before  they  wrote  novels  ;  and  Mr.  James 
has  never  gathered  into  a  book  from  the  back- 
numbers  of  magazines  the  half  of  his  earlier 
efforts. 

In  these  references  to  the  American  magazine  I 
believe  I  have  suggested  the  real  reason  of  the 
superiority  of  the  American  Short-stories  over  the 
English.  It  is  not  only  that  the  eye  of  patriotism 
may  detect  more  fantasy,  more  humor,  a  finer 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       95 

feeling  for  art,  in  these  younger  United  States,  but 
there  is  a  more  emphatic  and  material  reason  for 
the  American  proficiency.  There  is  in  the  United 
States  a  demand  for  Short-stories  which  does  not 
exist  in  Great  Britain,  or  at  any  rate  not  in  the 
same  degree.  The  Short-story  is  of  very  great 
importance  to  the  American  magazine.  But  in 
the  British  magazine  the  serial  Novel  is  the  one 
thing  of  consequence,  and  all  else  is  termed  "pad 
ding."  In  England  the  writer  of  three-volume 
Novels  is  the  best  paid  of  literary  laborers.  So  in 
England  whoever  has  the  gift  of  story-telling  is 
strongly  tempted  not  to  essay  the  difficult  art  of 
writing  Short-stories,  for  which  he  will  receive 
only  an  inadequate  reward  ;  and  he  is  as  strongly 
tempted  to  write  a  long  story  which  may  serve 
first  as  a  serial  and  afterward  as  a  three-volume 
Novel.  The  result  of  this  temptation  is  seen  in 
the  fact  that  there  is  not  a  single  English  novelist 
whose  reputation  has  been  materially  assisted  by 
the  Short-stories  he  has  written.  More  than  once 
in  the  United  States  a  single  Short-story  has  made 
a  man  known,  but  in  Great  Britain  such  an  event 
is  well-nigh  impossible.  The  disastrous  effect  on 
narrative  art  of  the  desire  to  distend  every  subject 
to  the  three-volume  limit  has  been  dwelt  on  un 
ceasingly  by  English  critics. 


96  PEN  AND  INK. 

The  three-volume  system  is  peculiar  to  Great 
Britain  :  it  does  not  obtain  either  in  France  or  the 
United  States.  As  a  consequence,  the  French  and 
American  writer  of  fiction  is  left  free  to  treat  his 
subject  at  the  length  it  demands, — no  more  and 
no  less.  It  is  pleasant  to  note  that  there  are  signs 
of  the  beginning  of  the  break-up  of  the  system 
even  in  England ;  and  the  protests  of  the  chief 
English  critics  against  it  are  loud  and  frequent.  It 
is  responsible  in  great  measure  for  the  invention 
and  protection  of  the  British  machine  for  making 
English  Novels,  of  which  Mr.  Warner  told  us  in 
his  entertaining  essay  on  fiction.  We  all  know 
the  work  of  this  machine,  and  we  all  recognize 
the  trade-mark  it  imprints  in  the  corner.  But  Mr. 
Warner  failed  to  tell  us,  what  nevertheless  is  a 
fact,  that  this  British  machine  can  be  geared  down 
so  as  to  turn  out  the  English  short  story.  Now, 
the  English  short  story,  as  the  machine  makes  it 
and  as  we  see  it  in  most  English  magazines,  is 
only  a  little  English  Novel,  or  an  incident  or  epi 
sode  from  an  English  Novel.  It  is  thus  the  exact 
artistic  opposite  of  the  American  Short-story,  of 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  chief  characteristics 
are  originality,  ingenuity,  compression,  and,  not 
infrequently,  a  touch  of  fantasy.  I  do  not  say,  of 
course,  that  the  good  and  genuine  Short-story  is 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       97 

not  written  in  England  now  and  then, — for  if  I 
were  to  make  any  such  assertion  some  of  the  best 
work  of  Mr.  Stevenson,  of  Mr.  Besant,  and  of  Mr. 
Anstey  would  rise  up  to  contradict  me  ;  but  this  is 
merely  an  accidental  growth,  and  not  a  staple  of 
production.  As  a  rule,  in  England  the  artist  in  fic 
tion  does  not  care  to  hide  his  light  under  a  bushel, 
and  he  puts  his  best  work  where  it  will  be  seen  of 
all  men, — that  is  to  say,  not  in  a  Short-story.  So 
it  happens  that  the  most  of  the  brief  tales  in  the 
English  magazines  are  not  true  Short-stories  at  all, 
and  that  they  belong  to  a  lower  form  of  the  art  of 
fiction,  in  the  department  with  the  amplified  anec 
dote.  It  is  the  three-volume  Novel  which  has  killed 
the  Short-story  in  England. 

Certain  of  the  remarks  in  the  present  paper  I 
put  forth  first  anonymously  in  the  columns  of  the 
Saturday  Review.  To  my  intense  surprise,  they 
were  controverted  in  the  Nation.  The  critic  be 
gan  by  assuming  that  the  writer  had  said  that 
Americans  preferred  Short -stories  to  Novels. 
What  had  really  been  said  was  that  there  was  a 
steady  demand  for  Short-stories  in  American  mag 
azines,  whereas  in  England  the  demand  was 
rather  for  serial  Novels.  "  In  the  first  place,"  said 
the  critic,  "Americans  do  not  prefer  Short-stories, 
as  is  shown  by  the  enormous  number  of  British 


98  PEN  AND  INK. 

Novels  circulated  among  us ;  and  in  the  second 
place,  tales  of  the  quiet,  domestic  kind,  which 
form  the  staple  of  periodicals  like  All  the  Year 
Round  and  Chambers' 's  Journal,  have  here  thou 
sands  of  readers  where  native  productions,  how 
ever  clever  and  original,  have  only  hundreds, 
since  the  former  are  reprinted  by  the  country 
papers  and  in  the  Sunday  editions  of  city  papers 
as  rapidly  and  regularly  as  they  are  produced  at 
home."  Now,  the  answer  to  this  is  simply  that 
these  English  Novels  and  English  stories  are  re 
printed  widely  in  the  United  States,  not  because 
the  American  people  prefer  them  to  anything  else, 
but  because,  owing  to  the  absence  of  international 
copyright,  they  cost  nothing.  That  the  American 
people  prefer  to  read  American  stories  when  they 
can  get  them  is  shown  by  the  enormous  circula 
tion  of  the  periodicals  which  make  a  specialty  of 
American  fiction. 

I  find  I  have  left  myself  little  space  to  speak  of 
the  Short-story  as  it  exists  in  other  literatures 
than  those  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 
The  conditions  which  have  killed  the  Short-story 
in  England  do  not  obtain  elsewhere ;  and  else 
where  there  are  not  a  few  good  writers  of  Short- 
stories.  Turgenef,  Bjornsen,  Sacher-Masoch,  Frey- 
tag,  Lindau,  are  the  names  which  one  recalls 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.       99 

at  once  and  without  effort  as  masters  in  the 
art  and  mystery  of  the  Short-story.  Turgenef 's 
Short-stories,  in  particular,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
commend  too  warmly.  But  it  is  in  France  that 
the  Short-story  flourishes  most  abundantly.  In 
France  the  conditions  are  not  unlike  those  in  the 
United  States  ;  and,  although  there  are  few  French 
magazines,  there  are  many  Parisian  newspapers 
of  a  wide  hospitality  to  literature.  The  demand 
for  the  Short-story  has  called  forth  an  abundant 
supply.  Among  the  writers  of  the  last  generation 
who  excelled  in  the  conte — which  is  almost  the 
exact  French  equivalent  for  Short-story,  as  nou- 
•vette  may  be  taken  to  indicate  the  story  which  is 
merely  short,  the  episode,  the  incident,  the  ampli 
fied  anecdote — were  Alfred  de  Musset,  Theophile 
Gautier,  and  Prosper  Merimee.  The  best  work 
of  Merimee  has  never  been  surpassed.  As  com 
pression  was  with  him  almost  a  mania,  as,  indeed, 
it  was  with  his  friend  Turgenef,  he  seemed  born  on 
purpose  to  write  Short-stories.  Turgenef  carried 
his  desire  for  conciseness  so  far  that  he  seems  al 
ways  to  be  experimenting  to  see  how  much  of  his 
story  he  may  leave  out.  One  of  the  foremost  writ 
ers  of  contes  is  Edmond  About,  whose  exquisite 
humor  is  known  to  all  readers  of  the  '  Man  with 
the  Broken  Ear,' — a  Short-story  in  conception, 


100  PEN  AND  INK. 

though  unduly  extended  in  execution.  Few  of  the 
charming  contes  of  M.  Alphonse  Daudet,  or  of  the 
earlier  Short-stories  of  M.  Emile  Zola,  have  been 
translated  into  English  ;  and  the  poetic  tales  of  M. 
Franfois  Coppee  are  likewise  unwisely  neglected  in 
this  country.  The  '  Abbe  Constantin  '  of  M.  Ludo- 
vic  Halevy  has  been  read  by  many,  but  the  Gallic 
satire  of  his  more  Parisian  Short-stories  has  been 
passed  over,  perhaps  wisely,  in  spite  of  their  broad 
humor  and  their  sharp  wit.  In  the  very  singular 
collection  of  stories  which  M.  Jean  Richepin  has 
called  the  '  Morts  Bizarres '  we  find  a  modern 
continuation  of  the  Poe  tradition,  always  more 
potent  in  France  than  elsewhere. 

(Here  I  cancel  a  casual  sentence  written  in  1885, 
before  Guy  de  Maupassant  had  completely  revealed 
his  extraordinary  gifts  and  his  marvellous  crafts 
manship.  His  Short-stories  are  masterpieces  of 
the  art  of  story-telling,  because  he  had  a  Greek 
sense  of  form,  a  Latin  power  of  construction,  and 
a  French  felicity  of  style.  They  are  simple,  most 
of  them  ;  direct,  swift,  inevitable,  and  inexorable 
in  their  straightforward  movement.  If  art  consists 
in  the  suppression  of  non-essentials,  there  have 
been  few  greater  artists  in  fiction  than  Maupassant. 
In  his  Short-stories  there  is  never  a  word  wasted, 
and  there  is  never  an  excursus.  Nor  is  there  any 
feebleness  or  fumbling.  What  he  wanted  to  do 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY.      JQI 

he  did,  with  the  unerring  certainty  of  Leather- 
stocking,  hitting  the  bull's-eye  again  and  again. 
He  had  the  abundance  and  the  ease  of  the  very 
great  artists  ;  and  the  half-dozen  or  the  half-score 
of  his  best  stories  are  among  the  very  best  Short- 
stories  in  any  language. 

In  his  later  tales  there  is  to  be  noted  a  tendency 
toward  the  psychology  of  the  morbid.  The 
thought  of  death  and  the  dread  of  mental  disease 
seemed  to  possess  him.  In  '  Le  Horla,'  for  exam 
ple,  we  find  Maupassant  taking  for  his  own  Fitz- 
james  O'Brien's  uncanny  monster,  invisible  and 
yet  tangible  ;  and  the  Frenchman  gave  the  tale  an 
added  touch  of  terror  by  making  the  unfortunate 
victim  discover  that  the  creature  he  feared  had  a 
stronger  will  than  his  own,  and  that  he  was  being 
hypnotized  to  his  doom  by  a  being  whom  he 
could  not  see,  but  whose  presence  he  could  feel.) 

The  Short-story  should  not  be  void  or  without 
form,  but  its  form  may  be  whatever  the  author 
please.  He  has  an  absolute  liberty  of  choice.  It 
may  be  a  personal  narrative,  like  Poe's  '  Descent 
into  the  Maelstrom '  or  Mr.  Hale's  '  My  Double, 
and  How  He  Undid  Me';  it  may  be  impersonal, 
like  Mr.  Frederick  B.  Perkins's  '  Devil-Puzzlers '  or 
Colonel  J.  W.  De  Forest's  'Brigade  Commander'; 
it  may  be  a  conundrum,  like  Mr.  Stockton's  in 
soluble  query,  the  '  Lady  or  the  Tiger  ? '  it  may  be 


102  PEN  AND  INK. 

'A  Bundle  of  Letters,'  like  Mr.  Henry  James's 
story,  or  'A  Letter  and  a  Paragraph,'  like  Mr. 
Banner's  ;  it  may  be  a  medley  of  letters  and  tele 
grams  and  narrative,  like  Mr.  Aldrich's  '  Margery 
Daw ' ;  it  may  be  cast  in  any  one  of  these  forms, 
or  in  a  combination  of  all  of  them,  or  in  a  wholly 
new  form,  if  haply  such  may  yet  be  found  by 
diligent  search.  Whatever  its  form,  it  should 
have  symmetry  of  design.  If  it  have  also  wit  or 
humor,  pathos  or  poetry,  and  especially  a  dis 
tinct  and  unmistakable  flavor  of  individuality,  so 
much  the  better.  But  the  chief  requisites  are 
compression,  originality,  ingenuity,  with  now  and 
again  a  touch  of  fantasy.  Sometimes  we  may  de 
tect  in  a  writer  of  Short-stories  a  tendency  toward 
the  over-elaboration  of  ingenuity,  toward  the  ex 
hibition  of  ingenuity  for  its  own  sake,  as  in  a 
Chinese  puzzle.  But  mere  cleverness  is  incom 
patible  with  greatness,  and  to  commend  a  writer 
as  "very  clever"  is  not  to  give  him  high  praise. 
From  this  fault  of  supersubtlety,  women  are  free 
for  the  most  part.  They  are  more  likely  than  men 
to  rely  on  broad  human  emotion,  and  their  ten 
dency  in  error  is  toward  the  morbid  analysis  of  a 
high-strung  moral  situation. 

The  more  carefully  we  study  the  history  of  fic 
tion  the  more  clearly  we  perceive  that  the  Novel 
and  the  Short-story  are  essentially  different  —  that 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY. 


103 


the  difference  between  them  is  not  one  of  mere 
length  only,  but  fundamental.  The  Short-story 
seeks  one  set  of  effects  in  its  own  way,  and 
the  Novel  seeks  a  wholly  distinct  set  of  effects 
in  a  wholly  distinct  way.  We  are  led  also  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  Short-story—in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  in  our  language  it  has  no  name 
of  its  own  —  is  one  of  the  few  sharply  defined 
literary  forms.  It  is  a  genre,  as  M.  Brunetiere 
terms  it,  a  species,  as  a  naturalist  might  call  it, 
as  individual  as  the  Lyric  itself  and  as  vari 
ous.  It  is  as  distinct  an  entity  as  the  Epic,  as 
Tragedy,  as  Comedy.  Now  the  Novel  is  not  a 
form  of  the  same  sharply  defined  individuality  ;  it 
is  —  or  at  least  it  may  be  —  anything.  It  is  the 
child  of  the  Epic  and  the  heir  of  the  Drama  ;  but 
it  is  a  hybrid.  And  one  of  the  foremost  of  living 
American  novelists,  who  happens  also  to  be  one 
of  the  most  acute  and  sympathetic  of  American 
critics,  has  told  me  that  he  was  often  distracted 
by  the  knowledge  of  this  fact  even  while  he  was 
writing  a  novel. 

In  the  history  of  literature  the  Short-story  was 
developed  long  before  the  Novel,  which  indeed  is 
but  a  creature  of  yesterday.  The  Short-story  also 
seems  much  easier  of  accomplishment  than  the 
Novel,  if  only  because  it  is  briefer.  And  yet  the 
list  of  the  masters  of  the  Short-story  is  far  less 


104  PEN  AND  INIC 

crowded  than  the  list  of  the  masters  of  the  longer 
form.  There  are  a  dozen  or  more  very  great  nov 
elists  recorded  in  the  history  of  fiction  ;  but  there 
are  scarcely  more  than  half  a  dozen  Short-story 
writers.  From  Chaucer  and  Boccaccio  we  pass  to 
Hawthorne  and  Poe  almost  without  finding  an 
other  name  that  insists  upon  enrolment.  A  little 
later  we  light  upon  Merimee  and  Turgenef,  whose 
title  to  be  recorded  there  is  none  to  dispute. 
Now  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  find 
two  more  that  no  competent  critic  would  dare  to 
omit  —  Guy  de  Maupassant  and  Rudyard  Kipling. 
(1885-1900) 

P.  S.  So  far  as  the  author  is  aware,  he  had  no 
predecessor  in  asserting  that  the  Short-story  differs 
from  the  Novel  essentially,  and  not  merely  in 
matter  of  length.  So  far  as  he  knows,  it  was  in 
the  present  paper  the  suggestion  was  first  made 
that  the  Short-story  is  in  reality  a  genre,  a  separate 
kind,  a  genus  by  itself.  But  although  this  dis 
tinction  may  not  have  been  made  explicitly  by 
any  earlier  critic,  there  is  little  doubt  that  Poe  felt 
it,  even  if  he  did  not  formulate  it  in  set  terms.  It 
seems  to  be  implicit  in  more  than  one  of  his  criti 
cal  essays,  more  particularly  in  that  on  Haw 
thorne's  tales.  And  it  is  from  this  essay  that  the 
following  quotations  are  taken : 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  SHORT-STORY. 


105 


"The  ordinary  novel  is  objectionable  from  its 
length,  for  reasons  already  stated  in  substance- 
As  it  cannot  be  read  at  one  sitting,  it  deprives  it 
self,  of  course,  of  the  immense  force  derivable  from 
totality.  Worldly  interests  intervening  during  the 
pauses  of  perusal  modify,  annul,  or  contract,  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  the  impressions  of  the  book. 
But  simply  cessation  in  reading  would,  of  itself, 
be  sufficient  to  destroy  the  true  unity.  In  the 
brief  tale,  however,  the  author  is  enabled  to  carry 
out  the  fullness  of  his  intention,  be  it  what  it  may. 
During  the  hour  of  perusal  the  soul  of  the  reader  is 
at  the  writer's  control.  There  are  no  external  or 
extrinsic  influences  —  resulting  from  weariness  or 
interruption. 

"A  skilful  literary  artist  has  constructed  a  tale. 
If  wise,  he  has  not  fashioned  his  thoughts  to  ac 
commodate  his  incidents;  but  having  conceived, 
with  deliberate  care,  a  certain  unique  or  single 
effect  to  be  wrought  out,  he  then  invents  such 
incidents,  he  then  combines  such  events,  as  may 
best  aid  him  in  establishing  this  preconceived  effect. 
If  his  very  initial  sentence  tend  not  to  the  out- 
bringing  of  this  effect,  then  he  has  failed  in  his 
first  step.  In  the  whole  composition  there  should 
be  no  word  written  of  which  the  tendency,  direct 
or  indirect,  is  not  to  the  one  preestablished  design. 
As  by  such  means,  with  such  care  and  skill,  a 


106  PEN  AND  INK. 

picture  is  at  length  painted  which  leaves  in  the 
mind  of  him  who  contemplates  it  with  a  kindred 
art  a  sense  of  the  fullest  satisfaction.  The  idea  of 
the  tale  has  been  presented  unblemished,  because 
undisturbed  ;  and  this  is  an  end  unattainable  by 
the  novel.  Undue  brevity  is  just  as  exceptiona 
ble  here  as  in  the  poem  ;  but  undue  length  is  yet 
more  to  be  avoided." 

In  one  of  his  '  Vailima  Letters '  Stevenson  de 
clares  his  adherence  to  what  Poe  called  the  princi 
ple  of  "  totality  ": 

"Make  another  end  to  it?  Ah,  yes,  but  that's 
not  the  way  I  write;  the  whole  tale  is  implied  ;  I 
never  use  an  effect  when  I  can  help  it,  unless  it 
prepares  the  effects  that  are  to  follow  ;  that's 
what  a  story  consists  in.  To  make  another  end, 
that  is  to  make  the  beginning  all  wrong.  The  de 
nouement  of  a  long  story  is  nothing;  it  is  just  'a 
full  close,'  which  you  may  approach  and  accom 
pany  as  you  please —  it  is  a  coda,  not  an  essential 
member  in  the  rhythm ;  but  the  body  and  end  of  a 
short  story  is  bone  of  the  bone  and  blood  of  the 
blood  of  the  beginning."  ('Vailima  Letters,'  vol. 
i.,  p.  147.) 


V 

A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY. 


OWADAYS  fiction  may  seem  to  some 
of  us  the  most  many-sided  depart 
ment  of  literature,  for  it  is  no  longer 
content  to  tell  a  story  only ;  it  insists 
at  least  in  pointing  a  moral,  even 
when  it  does  not  undertake  also  to  give  instruction 
in  history  and  in  theology.  But  I  doubt  if  the 
Novel  is  really  as  protean  as  the  Essay.  Mr. Owen 
Wister  is  not  further  removed  from  Mrs.  Hum 
phry  Ward,  Mark  Twain  is  not  more  widely  sep 
arated  from  George  Sand,  than  Thoreau  is  from 
Charles  Lamb,  or  Dr.  Johnson  from  Montaigne. 
It  would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  frame  a  definition 
wide  enough  to  include  the  essays  of  Bacon  and 
Emerson,  of  Steele  and  Goldsmith  and  Irving,  of 
Hazlitt  and  Bagehot  and  Lowell,  of  Stevenson  and 
Mr.  Howells.  The  dictionary  declares  that  an 
Essay  is  "a  discursive  composition  concerned  with 
a  particular  subject,  usually  shorter  and  less  me 
thodical  and  finished  than  a  treatise."  Few  things 

in  literature  are  more  methodical  and  finished  than 
109 


1 10  PEN  AND  INK. 

most  of  Macaulay's  essays,  and  few  things  are  less 
discursive  than  most  of  Matthew  Arnold's  essays, 
wherein  a  skeleton  of  logical  structure  is  always 
to  be  laid  bare  not  far  below  the  surface. 

One  lexicographer  quotes  from  Bacon  his  asser 
tion  that  he  chose  "to  write  certain  brief  notes, 
set  down  rather  significantly  than  curiously, 
which  I  have  called  essays,"  following  this  with 
the  explanation  that  "the  word  is  late,  but  the 
thing  is  ancient."  How  ancient  it  is  we  can  see 
for  ourselves  when  we  find  another  writer  seeking 
its  origin  in  the  "dispersed  meditations"  of  Sen 
eca's  'Epistles  to  Lucilius,'and  when  we  reflect  that 
if  the  germ  of  the  Essay  is  to  be  sought  in  any 
collection  of  "  dispersed  meditations,"  it  can  surely 
be  found  in  the  Proverbs  of  Solomon,  the  son  of 
David,  King  of  Israel  —  to  know  wisdom  and  in 
struction;  to  perceive  the  words  of  understanding; 
to  receive  the  instruction  of  wisdom,  justice  and 
judgment,  and  equity;  to  give  subtlety  to  the 
simple,  to  the  young  man  knowledge  and  dis 
cretion. 

So  abiding  is  the  influence  of  Montaigne  that  a 
certain  doubtful  suggestion  of  desultoriness  still 
attaches  itself  to  the  Essay,  as  though  it  were  fit 
reading  only  for  the  days  when,  in  Thoreau's 
phrase,  idleness  is  "the  most  attractive  and  pro 
ductive  industry."  A  content  so  modest  as  this 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY.  j  1 1 

tends  to  unfit  it  for  the  adequate  description  of 
writing  as  strenuous  as  Carlyle's  or  as  whimsically 
elaborated  as  Lamb's,  however  accurately  it  may 
apply  to  the  playful  pleasantry  of  Steele  and  Irving, 
for  instance.  It  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  between 
the  Essay  on  the  one  side  and  the  Treatise  or  Dis 
quisition  or  Thesis  on  the  other.  It  is  not  hard, 
however,  to  discover  in  the  Essay  itself  at  least 
two  broad  divisions,  in  one  of  which  we  find  the 
names  of  Montaigne,  Bacon,  and  Emerson,  while 
in  the  other  we  have  Steele  and  Addison,  Oliver 
Goldsmith,  and  Washington  Irving.  This  second 
group  it  is  that  we  have  in  mind  when  we  talk 
of  the  English  essayists,  and  yet  it  is  the  first 
group  that  has  the  securer  title,  or  at  least  the 
earlier. 

Wherever  Montaigne  may  have  got  the  hint, 
whether  from  Plutarch  or  from  Cicero's  Letters 
or  from  Seneca,  he  devised  a  new  literary  form, 
which  Bacon  borrowed  from  him,  and  which 
Emerson  in  turn  claimed  as  his  own  also.  These 
are  the  three  great  masters  of  the  wandering  and 
shapeless  medley  of  thoughts  more  or  less  relating 
to  a  single  topic.  The  charm  in  their  essays  is 
not  in  any  artful  arrangement;  it  is  in  the  pithy 
sayings  partly,  and  partly  in  the  writers'  self-reve 
lation.  They  were  all  three  of  them  kindly  and 
frank,  tolerant  and  shrewd,  keen-eyed  and  quick-- 


112  PEN  AND  INK. 

witted.  Montaigne  was  more  a  man  of  the  world, 
Bacon  more  a  man  of  affairs,  and  Emerson  more  a 
man  of  the  library. 

Steele,  aided  by  Addison,  took  the  Essay  where 
Montaigne  and  Bacon  had  left  it,  and  gave  it  an  un 
expected  development,  influenced  perhaps  by  Wal 
ton  and  perhaps  by  La  Bruyere.  The  eighteenth- 
century  Essay,  as  we  have  it  in  the  Tatter  and  the 
Spectator  and  in  all  the  cloud  of  their  copyists,  seems 
to  me  sometimes  almost  as  though  it  were  a 
definite  literary  form,  as  distinct  as  the  Short-story 
or  the  Elegy.  It  has  in  prose  the  characteristics 
which  we  ask  in  rhyme  from  versde  societe  —  the 
"familiar  verse"  of  Cowper.  Like  that,  it  is 
brief  and  brilliant  and  buoyant;  it  has  ease  and 
elegance;  it  only  hints  its  pathos,  and  it  never  in 
sists  on  its  wit;  it  reveals  the  gentleman  and  the 
scholar,  and  yet  it  recalls  always  the  man  about 
town. 

In  the  most  of  the  successes  of  Steele  and  Addi 
son  the  effort  of  imitation  is  obvious;  a  copy 
has  been  set  which  they  are  trying  to  follow,  often 
awkwardly  and  sometimes  even  clumsily.  Dr. 
Johnson's  grace  is  but  elephantine  when  he  tries  to 
dance  in  these  fetters;  and  even  Dr.  Johnson's  foe, 
Lord  Chesterfield,  clever  as  he  was,  failed  to  hit 
the  mark,  giving  to  the  Essay  a  metallic  hardness 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY.  \\j 

and  a  cynical  brilliance  not  quite  in  keeping.  But 
Goldsmith  was  perfectly  at  ease,  and  he  handled 
the  form  as  naturally  as  though  he  had  invented 
it  for  his  own  use.  With  all  his  individuality 
in  life,  Oliver  Goldsmith  was  in  literature  of 
the  lineage  of  Richard  Steele,  and  so  also  was 
Washington  Irving.  It  was  in  the  shop  Gold 
smith  had  inherited  from  Steele  that  Irving 
served  his  apprenticeship;  but  he  soon  set  up  for 
himself;  and  in  its  delicacy  and  its  grace  and  its 
ease,  Irving's  best  work  is  quite  worthy  of  com 
parison  with  the  masterpieces  of  the  elder  brothers 
of  the  craft. 

Slight  and  airy  as  the  Essay  was  in  the  hands  of 
Steele  and  Addison,  the  service  it  rendered  in  the 
development  of  the  art  of  character-drawing  can 
not  easily  be  overestimated.  If  Steele  and  Addi 
son  descended  from  Montaigne  on  one  side,  on 
the  other  they  were  the  heirs  of  Cervantes  also. 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  is  the  great-grandnephew 
of  the  Knight  of  the  Sorrowful  Countenance.  This 
fertile  Cervantine  tradition  they  transmitted  to 
those  who  came  after  them.  The  richly  colored 
portrait  of  the  Tory  Foxhunter  had  been  hung  in 
Addison's  studio  years  before  Fielding  painted 
the  robustious  Squire  Western.  Ned  Softly  the 
Poet  had  exhibited  his  pleasant  pedantry  in  the 


114  PEN  AND  INK. 

pages  of  the  Tatter  years  before  Jane  Austen 
had  etched  the  imperturbable  Mr.  Collins.  The 
'  Fine  Lady's  Journal '  had  been  printed  in  the 
Spectator  years  before  Miss  Edgeworth  drew  the 
character  of  the  flighty  Mrs.  Delacour. 

And  here,  if  a  discursive  inquiry  be  not  debarred, 
occasion  serves  to  put  a  puzzling  question.  When 
the  Essay  is  at  its  best,  it  has  the  spontaneity, 
the  unstudied  charm,  the  pleasantly  personal  flavor 
of  a  good  letter.  Now,  it  is  notorious  that  women 
have  ever  been  the  most  artistic,  as  they  are  the 
most  abundant,  of  letter-writers.  Nowadays  at 
least  women  are  the  only  masters  of  the  art  of 
epistolary  correspondence,  since  men  no  longer 
take  pen  in  hand  to  gossip  leisurely  with  a  distant 
friend.  Men  dictate  to  a  type-writer  when  they 
are  not  content  to  condense  their  communication 
into  a  peremptory  telegram.  Women  also  are 
more  interested  than  men  in  the  minor  points  of 
manners  and  of  morals,  which  are  of  the  essence 
of  the  Essay;  and  in  detecting  these  as  well  as 
in  dissecting  them  their  eyes  are  sharper.  Yet 
there  is  no  woman's  name  inscribed  high  upon 
the  roll  of  the  essayists.  The  fact  is  indisputable, 
whatever  the  reason  for  it.  Woman  never  gave 
her  mind  to  the  Essay,  and  so  she  has  left  no 
mark  upon  it.  She  waited  rather  until  the  modern 
Novel  had  been  invented,  and  in  that  she  seems 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY.  115 

to  have  found  the  best  medium  for  her  self-expres 
sion. 

Not  only  fiction  was  aided  in  its  development 
by  the  labors  of  Steele  and  Addison  and  of  their 
allies,  but  formal  criticism  also  and  more  than  one 
other  branch  of  literature  now  flourishing  abun 
dantly  in  our  magazines.  The  eighteenth-century 
Essay  was  not  monotonous;  indeed,  it  was  very 
varied  in  its  attack.  From  the  Spectator  alone 
one  could  pick  out  a  typical  character-sketch,  a 
typical  Short-story,  a  typical  humorous  skit,  a 
typical  Essay  in  criticism,  a  typical  theatrical  re 
view,  and  even  a  typical  obituary  notice. 

Mr.  Henry  James's  brief  memorial  of  the  late 
George  du  Maurier  might  have  had  for  its  uncon 
scious  model  Steele's  'Dick  Estcourt:  In  Memori- 
am ' ;  alike  in  method,  the  two  papers  are  alike 
also  in  the  warmth  of  affectionate  regret  that 
prompted  them.  Mr.  Howells's  recent  '  East  Side 
Ramble '  may  be  matched  by  Steele's  '  Day's 
Ramble  in  London';  and  in  both  Essays  can  be 
seen  a  kindred  keenness  of  observation,  a  kindred 
interest  in  the  little  things  of  which  life  is  made 
up,  and  a  kindred  kindliness  of  spirit  in  the  ob 
server  who  is  making  the  record.  Mr.  Frank  R. 
Stockton's  '  Casting  Away  of  Mrs.  Leeks  and 
Mrs.  Aleshine '  (or  any  other  of  his  marvellously 
matter-of-fact  impossibilities)  is  compounded  ac- 


1 1 6  PEN  AND  INK. 

cording  to  a  recipe  very  like  that  which  served 
Addison  when  he  wrote  out  the  details  of  the 
traveller's  tale  of  the  '  Frozen  Voices.'  The  sim 
ple  pathos  of  the  two  papers  in  which  Mr.  Bick- 
erstaff  visits  a  friend,  and  the  homely  touches  of 
human  nature  that  make  the  people  real  to  us  and 
alive  —  these  are  qualities  we  can  duplicate  in 
many  an  American  Short-story  and  character- 
sketch —  in  Mr.  Page's  '  Marse  Chan'  and  '  Meh 
Lady,'  for  example;  in  Miss  Wilkins's  '  Revolt  of 
Mother,'  in  Mr.  Garland's  'Return  of  the  Private.' 
So  also  we  cannot  but  see  that  it  was  Addison's 
rather  labored  and  rather  empty  papers  on  '  Para 
dise  Lost'  that  helped  to  make  it  possible  for 
Macaulay  afterward  to  write  his  trenchant  criti 
cism  of  Milton. 

Perhaps  it  is  this  very  versatility  of  the  Essay  as 
we  find  it  in  the  Tatter  and  the  Spectator  that 
has  misled  some  of  us  into  thinking  that  the  form 
is  not  as  popular  to-day  as  it  was  once.  The 
Essay,  as  it  was  then,  has  now  differentiated  itself 
into  the  Short-story  and  into  criticism,  neither  of 
which  is  remembered  to  have  had  any  connection 
with  it;  and  the  name  has  been  narrowed  again 
to  indicate  chiefly  the  paper  of  "dispersed  medi 
tations."  It  may  be  said  of  the  Essay  that  the 
stream  flows  nowadays  with  a  fuller  current  than 
ever  before,  but  as  it  has  worn  several  new  mouths 


A  NOTE  ON  THE  ESSAY. 


117 


for  itself,  no  one  of  them  has  the  prominence  or 
the  importance  of  the  old  single  channel.  Yet, 
even  when  we  take  the  word  in  its  most  reduced 
meaning,  the  Essay  has  not  lacked  masters  in  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century — Thoreau  and 
Lowell  and  Stevenson. 

(1897) 


VI 

TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


MR.  FREDERICK  LOCKER. 

ATRICIAN  rhymes"  is  the  apt  phrase 
Mr.  Stedman  coined  to  characterize 
that  kind  of  vers  de  societe,  name 
less  in  English,  which  is  more  than 
mere  society-verse.  It  describes  Mr. 
Locker's  poetry  more  accurately  than  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson's,  for  example,  or  Mr.  Calverley's,  since 
Mr.  Locker  confines  himself  more  strictly  within 
the  circle  of  "  good  society,"  of  Park  Lane,  and  of 
fashion.  Mr.  Locker  is  the  du  Maurier  of  song, 
and  his  '  London  Lyrics '  are  as  entertaining  and 
as  instructive  to  the  student  of  Victorian  manners 
as  Mr.  du  Maurier's  'Pictures  of  English  Society.' 
Mr.  Locker  has  succeeded  Praed  as  the  laureate  of 
the  world,  and  he  ignores  the  flesh,  and  is  igno 
rant  of  the  devil,  just  like  Praed,  and  just  like  so 
ciety  itself.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Locker's 
range  is  wider  than  Praed's,  whose  success  lay 


122  PEN  AND  INK. 

almost  altogether  in  his  songs  of  society;  Praed 
was  out  of  place  when  he  ventured  far  from  May- 
fair  and  beyond  the  sound  of  St.  George's  in  Han 
over  Square ;  while  Mr.  Locker's  Pegasus  pauses 
at  the  mouth  of  Cite  Fadette  as  gracefully  as  it 
treads  the  gravel  of  Rotten  Row.  The  later  poet 
has  wider  sympathies  than  the  elder,  who,  indeed, 
may  be  said  to  have  had  but  one  note.  The 
'  Vicar '  is  a  beautiful  bit  of  verse,  but  its  touch  of 
tenderness  sets  it  apart  from  all  Praed's  other 
work,  which  is  brilliant  with  a  hard  and  metallic 
brilliancy.  Praed  dazzles  almost  to  weariness ; 
his  lines  stand  out  sharply  like  fireworks  at  mid 
night.  More  brilliant  than  Praed  no  poet  could 
well  be.  More  pleasing  Mr.  Locker  is,  and  he 
gives  a  higher  pleasure.  He  has  wit  like  Praed, 
but  far  more  humor;  and  the  soft  radiance  of 
humor  never  tires  the  eye  like  the  quick  flashes  of 
wit.  With  broader  humor,  he  has  a  broader 
humanity  and  a  finer  individuality.  In  short,  the 
difference  between  the  two  may  be  summed  up 
in  favor  of  the  younger  man,  by  saying  that  Mr. 
Locker  can  write  Praedesque  poems, — compare 
the  '  Belle  of  the  Ball-room,'  for  instance,  and 
'A  Nice  Correspondent,' — while  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether  Praed  could  have  emulated  Mr. 
Locker's  '  To  My  Mistress'  and  'At  Her  Window.' 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  123 

Of  course,  it  is  easy  to  say  that  Mr.  Locker  con 
tinues  the  tradition  of  Prior  and  Praed ;  it  is  easy 
also  to  see  that,  in  two  respects,  at  least,  the  pro 
gression  shows  the  progress  of  the  age.  One  im 
provement  is  in  the  form  used  by  the  poet ;  the 
other  in  the  feeling,  the  temper  of  the  poet  him 
self.  Praed  contented  himself  with  putting  his 
best  work  into  the  eight-line  stanza,  now  a  little 
worn  from  overwork : 

Our  love  was  like  most  other  loves ; 

A  little  glow,  a  little  shiver, 
A  rosebud  and  a  pair  of  gloves, 

And  'Fly  not  yet' — upon  the  river; 
Some  jealousy  of  some  one's  heir, 

Some  hopes  of  dying  broken-hearted, 
A  miniature,  a  lock  of  hair, 

The  usual  vows — and  then  we  parted. 

In  this  metre,  Mr.  Locker  and  Mr.  Austin  Dob- 
son,  in  England,  and  Mr.  Saxe,  in  America,  have 
written  verses  that  Praed  might  not  disown ; 
but  though  the  metal  was  theirs,  the  mould  was 
Praed's.  Mr.  Locker's  best  work  has  not  gone 
into  any  one  form ;  he  has  wisely  varied  his 
metre;  he  has  invented  of  his  own,  and  he  has 
borrowed  from  his  neighbor.  '  A  Nice  Corre 
spondent'  is  Swinburnian  in  its  rhythm,  and 


124  PEN  AND  INK. 

'To  My  Grandmother'  repeats  the  measures  of 
Holmes's  'Last  Leaf/  a  delightful  and  most  diffi 
cult  metre,  lending  itself  easily  to  intricate  har 
monies,  and  not  to  be  attempted  now  by  meaner 
hands : 

This  Relative  of  mine, 
Was  she  seventy-and-nine 

When  she  died? 
By  the  canvas  may  be  seen 
How  she  looked  at  seventeen, 

As  a  Bride. 

Beneath  a  summer  tree 
Her  maiden  reverie 

Has  a  charm : 
Her  ringlets  are  in  taste  ; 
What  an  arm  !  .  .  .  what  a  waist 

For  an  arm ! 

Is  not  this  the  perfection  of  daintiness  and  deli 
cacy?  Is  it  not  delightful — this  mingling  of  sly 
fun  and  playful  banter?  And  this  brings  us  to 
the  second  quality,  in  which  Mr.  Locker  and  Mr. 
Dobson  are  plainly  superior  to  Prior  and  Praed — 
in  their  treatment  of  woman.  Prior  thought  of 
women  with  little  feeling,  and  he  wrote  of  them 
with  little  respect ;  however  much  he  might  pre 
tend  to  worship  a  dame  or  a  damsel,  he  kept  a 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  125 

keen  and  unkind  eye  on  her  failings.  At  all  times 
his  tone  toward  women  is  one  of  good-natured 
contempt,  often  ill-concealed.  With  Praed,  a 
complete  change  had  come  in  the  attitude ;  he 
is  avowedly  a  friendly  critic,  and  yet  his  verse 
catches  no  tinge  of  warmth  from  his  friendliness. 
Though  he  may  have  felt  deeply,  he  lets  his  scep 
ticism  and  his  wit  hide  his  feeling  until  we  are 
well-nigh  forced  to  doubt  whether  he  had  any 
feeling  to  hide.  The  lively  beauties  who  figure  in 
Praed's  glittering  verse  are  far  more  true  to  life 
than  the  French  fictions  of  Prior,  but  the  ladies  of 
Mr.  Locker  and  Mr.  Dobson  are  quite  as  charm 
ing  and  indubitably  more  natural.  They  are  true 
women,  too,  not  mere  figments  of  the  fancy ; 
they  are  the  result  of  later  and  deeper  observation ; 
and  they  have  far  more  variety  from  the  given 
prototype.  Prior  wrote  of  women  at  large,  and 
Praed  rang  the  changes  on  the  *  Belle  of  the  Ball 
room.'  Now,  Mr.  Locker  has  a  gallery  of  girls,  all 
fresh  and  ingenuous  young  maidens.  Prior  did 
not  respect  women  ;  Praed  admired  them  coldly  ; 
Mr.  Locker  has  a  warm  regard  for  them  and  a 
manly  respect,  and  also  a  demure  humor  which 
sees  into  their  wiles  and  their  weaknesses  quite  as 
sharply  as  did  Prior  or  Praed. 

Having  set  forth  thus  some  of  the  things  which 


126  PEN  AND  INK. 

Mr.  Locker,  the  poet,  is  and  is  not,  it  may  be  well 
to  give  a  few  facts  about  Mr.  Locker,  the  man.  He 
was  born  in  1821.  His  father,  Edward  Hawke 
Locker,  was  in  the  public  service,  and  took  a 
warm  interest  in  literature  and  art.  His  grand 
father,  Captain  W.  Locker,  R.  N.,  was  an  old 
friend  of  Lord  Nelson's ;  and  both  Collingwood 
and  Nelson  served  under  him.  Mr.  Locker  com 
posed  little  until  late  in  life,  or  at  least  until  he  was 
thirty ;  and  he  found  great  difficulty,  so  he  wrote 
to  a  friend,  "in  persuading  editors  to  have  any 
thing  to  say  to  my  verses  ;  but  Thackeray  believed 
in  me,  and  used  to  say,  '  Never  mind,  Locker,  our 
verse  may  be  small  beer,  but  at  any  rate  it  is  the 
right  tap.' '  Thus  encouraged,  Mr.  Locker  wrote 
on,  and  in  time  editors  began  to  relent.  In  1857 
he  gathered  his  scattered  poems  and  put  them  forth 
in  a  single  volume  as  'London  Lyrics.'  As  edition 
followed  edition  he  has  added  the  few  poems  he 
has  written  of  late  years,  and  has  dropped  those  of 
his  earlier  poems  that  he  thought  unworthy.  The 
latest  published  edition — the  eighth,  I  think  it 
is — is  scarcely  any  heavier  than  the  first.  Later 
than  this,  however,  is  a  little  book,,  beautifully 
printed  and  beautifully  bound,  which  Mr.  Locker 
has  recently  given  to  his  friends,  and  which  con 
tains  a  special  selection  of  his  very  best  work, 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  127 

made  by  Mr.  Austin  Dobson,  who  has  prefixed 
this  friendly  little  sextain  : 

Apollo  made,  one  April  day, 
A  new  thing  in  the  rhyming  way ; 
Its  turn  was  neat,  its  wit  was  clear, 
It  wavered  'twixt  a  smile  and  tear ; 
Then  Momus  gave  a  touch  satiric, 
And  it  became  a  'London  Lyric.' 

Besides  putting  his  own  vers  de  societe  into  a 
book,  Mr.  Locker  made  a  collection,  under  the  title 
of  'Lyra  Elegantiarum/  of  the  best  specimens  in 
English  of  the  vers  de  societe  and  vers  d' occasion  of 
poets  no  longer  living.  Of  this  a  new  and  revised 
edition  was  published  in  1 867 ;  it  is  a  model  of  what 
such  a  selection  should  be  ;  and  it  was  ushered  in  by 
an  essay  of  the  editor's — all  too  brief — on  the  art 
of  writing  vers  de  societe.  In  1 879  Mr.  Locker  pub 
lished  a  most  amusing  little  volume  of  '  Patch 
work,'  containing  bits  of  rhyme  and  bits  of  talk, 
with  here  a  jest  and  there  a  joke,  excerpts  from 
his  commonplace  book,  and  enlivened  with  a  few 
of  the  anecdotes  he  is  wont  to  tell  most  effectively. 
For  the  lyrist  of  London  is  no  recluse  ;  he  is  a  man 
of  the  world,  even  more  than  he  is  a  man  of  letters. 
In  life  as  in  literature  he  has  both  humor  and  good- 
humor.  Although  satiric  by  nature,  he  is  thor- 


128  PEN  AND  INK. 

oughly  sympathetic  and  generous.  Well-to-do  fri 
the  world,  he  has  been  able  to  indulge  his  liking 
for  the  little  things  in  art  which  make  life  worth 
living.  His  collections  of  china,  of  drawings,  of 
engravings,  are  all  excellent;  and  his  literary 
curiosities,  first  editions  of  great  books  and 
precious  autographs  of  great  men,  make  a  poor 
American  wickedly  envious.  He  is  a  connoisseur 
of  the  best  type,  never  buying  trash  or  bargain- 
hunting;  knowing  what  he  wants,  and  why  he 
wants  it,  and  what  it  is  worth ;  and  his  treasures 
are  freely  opened  to  any  literary  brother  who  is 
seeking  after  truth. 

In  studying  Mr.  Locker's  pictures  of  English 
society  we  cannot  but  feel  that  the  poet  has  drawn 
his  lines  with  the  living  model  before  him.  It  is  in 
the  distinctively  London-town  lyrics — in  the  '  Pil 
grims  of  Pall  Mall,'  in  'Rotten  Row,'  in  'At  Hurl- 
ingham,'in  '  St.  James' Street,'  and  in '  Piccadilly,' — 

Piccadilly !     Shops,  palaces,  bustle,  and  breeze, 
The  whirring  of  wheels  and  the  murmur  of  trees, 

By  night  or  by  day,  whether  noisy  or  stilly, 
Whatever  my  mood  is,  I  love  Piccadilly. 

— it  is  in  these  that  Mr.  Locker  most  shows  the 
influence  of  Praed,  which  is  decidedly  less  apparent 
in  the  less  local  poems, — in  'A  Garden  Lyric,'  in 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


129 


'  On  an  Old  Muff, '  in  '  Geraldine, '  and  in  the  sportive 
and  brightsome  lines  on  '  A  Human  Skull ' : 

A  human  Skull,  I  bought  it  passing  cheap ; 

No  doubt  'twas  dearer  to  its  first  employer ! 
I  thought  mortality  did  well  to  keep 

Some  mute  memento  of  the  Old  Destroyer. 

Time  was,  some  may  have  prized  its  blooming  skin  ; 

Here  lips  were  woo'd,  perhaps,  in  transport  tender ; 
Some  may  have  chuck'd  what  was  a  dimpled  chin, 

And  never  had  my  doubt  about  its  gender. 

It  may  have  held  (to  shoot  some  random  shots) 
Thy  brains,  Eliza  Fry!  or  Baron  Byron's; 

The  wits  of  Nelly  Gwynne  or  Doctor  Watts — 
Two  quoted  bards.     Two  philanthropic  sirens. 

But  this,  I  trust,  is  clearly  understood, 
If  man  or  woman,  if  adored  or  hated  — 

Whoever  own'd  this  Skull  was  not  so  good 
Nor  quite  so  bad  as  many  may  have  stated. 

Besides  the  playful  humor  of  these  poems,  two 
things  especially  are  to  be  noted  in  them — individu 
ality  and  directness  of  expression.  Whatever  influ 
ence  you  may  think  you  see  here  of  some  other  poet, 
Horace,  or  Beranger,  or  Gautier,  or  Thackeray, — 
and  the  variety  of  these  names  shows  the  poet's 
versatility, — you  cannot  doubt  that  these  poems 
are  of  a  truth  Mr.  Locker's  own,  stamped  with  his 


130  PEN  AND  INK. 

seal,  marked  with  his  image  and  superscription. 
Here  plainly  is  a  man  with  a  character  of  his  own, 
looking  at  life  through  his  own  eyes,  now  laughing 
with  hearty  gayety,  again  smiling  a  sad  smile : 

"  I  still  can  laugb"  is  still  my  boast, 

But  mirth  has  sounded  gayer ; 
And  which  provokes  my  laughter  most, 

The  preacher  or  the  player? 
Alack,  I  cannot  laugh  at  what 

Once  made  us  laugh  so  freely; 
For  Nestroy  and  Grassot  are  not, 

And  where  is  Mrs.  Keeley? 

Quite  as  noteworthy  as  the  individuality  of  the 
poet  is  his  studied  clearness.  There  is  never  an 
inversion  or  an  involution  ;  the  verse  is  as  straight 
forward  as  prose,  and  as  easy  to  be  "  understanded 
of  the  people."  The  rhythm  flows  freely;  the 
rhymes  are  neat  and  novel,  and  never  forced  ;  and 
the  manner  never  intrudes  itself  to  the  injury  of 
the  matter.  But  Mr.  Locker  is  not  like  Theophile 
Gautier,  that  Benvenuto  Cellini  of  verse,  nor  like 
the  cunning  artificers  of  Gautier's  school — poets 
who  polish  a  poor  little  idea  until  they  can  see 
themselves  in  it.  That  he  is  ever  going  over  his 
work  with  the  file  any  one  can  see  who  will  com 
pare  the  first  stanzas  of 'Geraldine  and  I,'  and  of 
'A  Garden  Lyric';  but  he  never  overweights  his 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  131 

verse  with  a  gorgeous  setting,  from  selfish  delight 
in  the  skill  of  his  workmanship.  Indeed,  Mr.  Locker 
sometimes  has  carried  his  search  for  simplicity  of 
statement  almost  too  far.  But  so  many  poets  now 
adays  are  as  hard  to  understand  as  a  Greek  chorus, 
that  we  ought  to  be  thankful  to  one  who  takes 
pains  to  be  clear,  and  direct,  and  unaffected. 

Affectation,  indeed,  is  always  a  stumbling-block 
in  the  path  of  the  maker  of  vers  de  societe  ;  but  in 
'  London  Lyrics '  there  are  no  traces  of  any  slip. 
The  poems  are  as  simple  and  honest  as  the  verse 
is  direct  and  clear.  Nowhere  is  affectation  more 
easy  than  in  addressing  childhood ;  and,  with  the 
exception  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Longfellow,  per 
haps  no  poet  of  our  day  has  written  of  children  as 
often  as  Mr.  Locker.  He  has  made  a  '  Rhyme  of 
One,'  and  'Little  Dinky/  a  rhyme  of  less  than  one 
(she  is  twelve  weeks  old).  He  has  written  *  To 
Lina  Oswald'  (aged  five  years),  and  to  'Geraldine* 
(who  is  fifteen);  and  'Gertrude's  Necklace*  be 
longed  to  a  maiden  not  much  older.  And  all 
these  poems  to  the  young  reveal  the  subdued 
humor  and  the  worldly  wit  we  have  seen  in  the 
others  written  for  their  elders  and  betters,  their 
pastors  and  masters,  and  they  have  even  more  of 
delicate  tenderness  and  of  true  sentiment  tainted 
by  no  trace  of  sentimentality. 


132 


PEN  AND  INK. 


One  of  Mr.  Locker's  songs  has  a  lyric  grace  and 
an  evanescent  sweetness,  recalling  Herrick  or 
Suckling : 

AT  HER   WINDOW. 

Beating  Heart!  we  come  again 

Where  my  Love  reposes ; 
This  is  Mabel's  window-pane ; 

These  are  Mabel's  roses. 

Is  she  nested  ?     Does  she  kneel 

In  the  twilight  stilly, 
Lily-clad  from  throat  to  heel, 

She,  my  Virgin  Lily  ? 

Soon  the  wan,  the  wistful  stars, 

Fading,  will  forsake  her ; 
Elves  of  light,  on  beamy  bars, 

Whisper  then,  and  wake  her. 

Let  this  friendly  pebble  plead 

At  the  flowery  grating ; 
If  she  hear  me,  will  she  heed  ? 

Mabel,  I  am  waiting. 

Mabel  will  be  decked  anon, 

Zoned  in  bride's  apparel ; 
Happy  zone  !  oh,  hark  to  yon 

Passion-shaken  carol. 

Sing  thy  song,  thou  tranced  thrush, 

Pipe  thy  best,  thy  clearest ; 
Hush,  her  lattice  moves,  O,  hush — 

Dearest  Mabel! — dearest. 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  133 

Is  not  this  a  marvel  of  refinement  and  restraint  ? 
It  is  as  purely  a  lyric  as  the  song  of  the  thrush 
itself.  Especially  in  poems  like  this  is  it  that  Mr. 
Locker  is  wholly  other  than  Praed,  with  whom 
people  persist  in  linking  him.  He  has  at  once  a 
finer  vein  of  poetry  and  a  broader  vein  of  humor. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  humor  is  Mr.  Locker's  chief 
characteristic, — a  gentle  humor,  always  under 
control,  and  never  boisterous  or  burly,  yet  frank 
and  free  and  full  of  mischief, — the  humor  of  a 
keen  observer,  who  is  at  once  a  gentleman  and  a 
poet.  What,  for  example,  can  be  more  comic  in 
conception,  or  more  clear-cut  in  execution,  than 
this?— 

A  TERRIBLE   INFANT. 

I  recollect  a  nurse  call'd  Ann, 

Who  carried  me  about  the  grass, 
And  one  fine  day  a  fine  young  man 

Came  up  and  kissed  the  pretty  lass. 
She  did  not  make  the  least  objection  ! 

Thinks  I—  "Aba! 
Wben  I  can  talk  I'll  tell  mamma  !  " 
And  that's  my  earliest  recollection. 

It  is  in  this  quality  of  humor  mainly,  and  in  the 
fact  that  his  verse  is  more  individual  than  imper 
sonal,  that  Mr.  Locker's  gifts  differ  from  those  of 
Mr.  Austin  Dobson.  There  is  no  need  to  make 


134  P£N  AND  INK. 

a  comparison  of  Mr.  Locker's  work  with  Mr. 
Dobson's  ;  and,  at  best,  comparisons  are  futile. 
Criticism  is  nowadays  the  tenth  muse,  and  I  am 
sure  that  Mrs.  Malaprop  would  say  that  compari 
sons  do  not  become  that  young  woman.  Suffice 
it  to  state  that  Mr.  Frederick  Locker  and  Mr.  Aus 
tin  Dobson  stand,  each  on  his  own  ground,  at  the 
head  of  the  poets  who  sing  of  English  society  as  it 
is.  Mr.  Locker  is  the  elder,  and  it  was  to  him 
that  Mr.  Dobson  dedicated  his  '  Proverbs  in  Porce 
lain/  in  these  lines : 

Is  it  to  kindest  friend  I  send 

This  nosegay  gathered  new  ? 
Or  is  it  more  to  critic  sure, 

To  singer  clear  and  true  ? 
I  know  not  which,  indeed,  nor  need: 

All  three  I  found — in  you. 

(.883) 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


II. 
MR.  AUSTIN  DOBSON. 

s  Mr.  Lang  told  us  in  his  sympathetic 
paper  on  M.  Theodore  de  Banville, 
some  literary  reputations  are  like  the 
fairies  in  that  they  cannot  cross  run 
ning  water.  Others  again,  it  seems 
to  me,  are  rather  like  the  misty  genii  of  the  Ara 
bian  Nights,  which  loom  highest  when  seen  from 
afar.  Poe,  for  example,  is  more  appreciated  in 
England  than  at  home;  and  Cooper  is  given  a 
more  lofty  rank  by  French  than  by  American 
critics.  In  much  the  same  manner,  we  note, 
Carlyle  gained  the  ear  of  an  American  audience 
when  he  was  not  listened  to  with  attention  in 
Great  Britain ;  and  the  scattered  verses  of  Praed 
were  collected  together  for  American  admirers 
long  before  the  appearance  of  an  English  edition. 
And  so  it  is,  I  think,  with  Mr.  Austin  Dobson, 
whose  position  as  a  leader  in  one  division  of  Eng- 


136  PEN  AND  INK. 

lish  poetry  was  recognized  more  immediately  and 
more  unhesitatingly  in  these  United  States  than 
in  his  native  Great  Britain.  To  Mr.  Dobson  the 
young  school  of  American  writers  of  familiar 
verse — to  use  Cowper's  admirable  phrase — look 
up  as  to  a  master ;  and  his  poems  are  read  and 
pondered  and  imitated  by  not  a  few  of  the  more 
promising  of  our  younger  poets. 

Mr.  Austin  Dobson  was  born  at  Plymouth,  Jan 
uary  1 8,  1840.  He  comes  of  a  family  of  civil 
engineers,  and  it  was  as  an  engineer  that  his 
grandfather,  toward  the  end  of  the  last  century, 
went  to  France,  where  he  settled,  and  married  a 
French  lady.  Among  the  earliest  recollections  of 
Mr.  Dobson's  father  was  his  arrival  in  Paris  on 
one  side  of  the  Seine  as  the  Russians  arrived  on 
the  other.  This  must  have  been  in  1814.  But 
the  French  boy  had  long  become  an  English  man 
when  the  poet  was  born.  At  the  age  of  eight  or 
nine  Austin  Dobson  was  taken  by  his  parents — 
so  a  biographer  tells  us  —  "to  Holyhead,  in  the 
island  of  Anglesea;  he  was  educated  atBeaumaris, 
at  Coventry,  and  finally  at  Strasburg,  whence  he 
returned,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  with  the  inten 
tion  of  becoming  a  civil  engineer."  But  in  De 
cember,  1856,  he  accepted  an  appointment  in  the 
civil  service,  where  he  has  remained  ever  since. 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


'37 


Thus  he  has  been  able  to  act  on  the  advice  of 
Coleridge,  often  urged  again  by  Dr.  Holmes,  to 
the  effect  "that  a  literary  man  should  have  an 
other  calling."  Dr.  Holmes  adds  the  sly  sug 
gestion  that  he  should  confine  himself  to  it ; 
and  this  is  what — for  nearly  ten  years — Mr. 
Dobson  did.  He  dabbled  a  little  in  art,  having, 
like  Theophile  Gautier,  the  early  ambition  of  be 
coming  a  painter.  He  learned  to  draw  a  little  on 
wood.  He  wrote  a  little,  mostly  in  prose.  In 
fact,  there  are  only  four  poems  in  the  first  edition 
of  '  Vignettes  in  Rhyme  '  which  were  written  be 
fore  1868.  It  was  in  this  year  that  Si.  Paul's 
magazine  was  started  by  Anthony  Trollope,  an 
editor  at  once  sympathetic  and  severe ;  he  ap 
preciated  good  work,  and  was  unsparing  in  the 
kindly  criticism  which  might  make  it  better.  In 
St.  Paul's,  therefore,  between  March,  1868,  and 
March,  1874,  appeared  nearly  twoscore  of  Mr. 
Dobson's  pieces,  including  some  of  his  very  best : 
'  Tu  Quoque/  '  A  Dialogue  from  Plato/  '  Une 
Marquise,'  '  An  Autumn  Idyll/  '  Dorothy/  '  A 
Gentleman  of  the  Old  School/  '  A  vice/ — with  its 
hazardous,  bird-like  effect,  French  in  a  way  and  in 
exquisite  taste, —  and  the  subtle  and  pathetic 
'  Drama  of  the  Doctor's  Window/  In  October, 
1873,  tnere  was  published  the  first  edition  of 


IjS  PEN  AND  INK. 

'  Vignettes  in  Rhyme,'  and  the  poet  received  for 
the  first  time  that  general  recognition  which  de 
nies  itself  to  the  writer  of  verses  scattered  here 
and  there,  throughout  magazines  and  newspapers. 
'  Vignettes  in  Rhyme '  passed  into  its  third  edi 
tion  ;  and  less  than  four  years  after  its  appearance 
Mr.  Dobson  made  a  second  collection  of  his  verses, 
published  in  May,  1877,  as  'Proverbs  in  Porce 
lain.'  From  these  two  volumes  the  author  made 
a  selection,  adding  a  few  poems  written  since  the 
appearance  of  the  second  book,  and  thus  prepared 
the  collective  American  volume,  called  '  Vignettes 
in  Rhyme,'  issued  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co.  in  1880, 
with  a  graceful  and  alluring  introduction  by  Mr. 
Stedman.  '  Old- World  Idylls,'  published  in  Lon 
don  in  the  fall  of  1883,  is  based  on  this  American 
selection  of  1880.  It  has  been  followed  by  'At 
the  Sign  of  the  Lyre,'  which  includes  most  of  the 
poetry  he  wrote  before  1885.  Unfortunately  we 
have  not  Mr.  Dobson's  complete  poems  even  in 
these  two  collections,  for  his  own  fastidious  taste 
has  excluded  poems  which  the  less  exacting  reader 
had  learned  to  like,  and  which  the  admirers  of  fine 
humorous  verse  will  not  willingly  let  die.  Let  us 
hope  that  there  will  be  vouchsafed  to  us,  in  due 
time,  a  volume  in  which  we  may  treasure  Mr. 
Dobson's  'Complete  Poetical  Works.'  Akin  to 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


139 


the  fastidiousness  which  rejects  certain  poems 
altogether — and  quite  as  annoying  to  many — is 
the  fastidiousness  with  which  the  poet  is  contin 
ually  going  over  his  verses  with  a  file,  polishing 
until  they  shine  again,  smoothing  an  asperity 
here,  and  there  rubbing  out  a  blot.  This  is 
always  a  dangerous  pastime,  and  the  poet  is  rarely 
well  advised  who  attempts  it,  as  all  students  of 
Lord  Tennyson  will  bear  witness.  If  the  poet  is 
athirst  for  perfection,  he  may  lay  his  poems  by 
for  the  Horatian  space  of  nine  years,  but  when 
they  are  once  printed  and  published,  he  had  best 
keep  his  hands  off  them.  Of  course  the  most 
of  Mr.  Dobson's  alterations  are  unexceptionable 
improvements,  yet  there  are  a  few  that  we  reject 
with  abhorrence. 

Mr.  Aldrich  has  said  that  Mr.  Dobson  "  has  the 
grace  of  Suckling  and  the  finish  of  Herrick,  and  is 
easily  master  of  both  in  metrical  art."  The  beauty 
of  his  poetry  is  due  in  great  measure  to  its  lyric 
lightness.  He  has  many  lines  and  many  whole 
poems  which  sing  themselves  into  the  memory, 
and  cannot  be  thrust  thence.  Who  that  has  made 
acquaintance  with  the  'Ladies  of  St.  James's' 
can  forget  "Phillida,  my  Phillida "  ?  And  who 
cannot  at  will  call  up  before  him  Autonoe  and 
Rosina  and  Rose  and  all  the  other  "  damosels, 


140 


PEN  AND  INK. 


blithe  as  the  belted  bees,"  whom  the  poet  has 
set  before  us  with  so  much  breezy  freshness  ? 
To  know  them  is  to  love  them,  and  to  love 
the  poet  who  has  sung  them  into  being.  Next 
to  the  airy  grace  and  the  flowing  and  unfailing 
humor  which  inform  all  Mr.  Dobson's  poems, 
perhaps  the  quality  which  most  deserves  to  be 
singled  out  is  their  frank  and  hearty  wholesome- 
ness.  There  is  nothing  sickly  about  them,  or 
morbid,  or  perverse,  as  there  is  about  so  much 
contemporary  British  verse.  Mr.  Dobson  is  entirely 
free  from  the  besetting  sin  of  those  minor  poets 
who  sing  only  in  a  minor  key.  He  has  no  trace 
of  affectation,  and  no  taint  of  sentimentality.  He 
is  simple  and  sincere.  His  delicacy  is  manly,  and 
not  effeminate.  There  is  a  courtly  dignity  about 
all  his  work ;  and  there  is  nowhere  a  hint  of  bad 
taste.  Mr.  Locker  once  spoke  to  me  of  the  '  Un 
finished  Song/  and  said  that  "the  spirit  is  so 
beautiful";  and  of  a  truth  the  spirit  of  all  Mr. 
Dobson's  work  is  beautiful.  There  is  unfailing 
elevation.  Mr.  Dobson,  injoubert's  phrase,  never 
forgets  that  the  lyre  is  a  winged  instrument.  Here 
is  a  lyric,  not  one  of  his  best  known,  and  not  in 
the  style  he  most  frequently  attempts ;  but  it  is 
lifted  out  of  commonplace,  though  the  subject  is 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  141 

hackneyed  and  worn;    it  soars,  and  sings  as  it 
soars,  like  the  lark : 

A   SONG   OF   THE   FOUR   SEASONS. 

When  Spring  comes  laughing 

By  vale  and  hill, 
By  wind-flower  walking 

And  daffodil, — 
Sing  stars  of  morning, 

Sing  morning  skies, 
Sing  blue  of  speedwell, 

And  my  Love's  eyes. 

When  comes  the  Summer, 

Full-leaved  and  strong, 
And  gay  birds  gossip 

The  orchard  long, — 
Sing  hid,  sweet  honey 

That  no  bee  sips ; 
Sing  red,  red  roses, 

And  my  Love's  lips. 

When  Autumn  scatters 

The  leaves  again, 
And  piled  sheaves  bury 

The  broad-wheeled  wain,— 
Sing  flutes  of  harvest 

Where  men  rejoice ; 
Sing  rounds  of  reapers, 

And  my  Love's  voice. 


142  PEN  AND  INK. 

But  when  comes  Winter 

With  hail  and  storm, 
And  red  fire  roaring 

And  ingle  warm, — 
Sing  first  sad  going 

Of  friends  that  part ; 
Then  sing  glad  meeting, 

And  my  Love's  heart. 

And  with  all  this  elevation  and  lyric  lightness 
there  is  no  lack  of  true  pathos  and  genuine  feeling 
for  the  lowly  and  the  hopeless.  More  than  once 
has  Mr.  Dobson  expressed  his  sympathy  for  the 
striving,  and  especially  for  those  strugglers  who 
are  handicapped  in  the  race,  and  who  eat  their 
hearts  in  silent  revolt  against  hard  circumstances : 

Ah,  Reader,  ere  you  turn  the  page, 

I  leave  you  this  for  moral : — 
Remember  those  who  tread  life's  stage 
With  weary  feet  and  scantest  wage, 

And  ne'er  a  leaf  for  laurel. 

The  best  of  Mr.  Dobson 's  poems  result  from  a 
happy  mingling  of  a  broad  and  genial  humanity 
with  an  extraordinarily  fine  artistic  instinct.  Just 
as  Chopin  declared  that  there  were  paintings  at  the 
sight  of  which  he  heard  music,  so  it  may  be  said 
that  there  are  poems  the  hearing  of  which  calls  up 
a  whole  gallery  of  pictures.  Side  by  side  with 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


143 


the  purely  lyric  pieces  are  as  many  more  as  purely 
pictorial.  The  '  Cure's  Progress,'  for  example,  is 
it  not  a  like  masterpiece  of  genre?  And  the  bal 
lade  '  On  a  Fan,  that  Belonged  to  the  Marquise  de 
Pompadour,'  with  its  wonderful  movement  and 
spirit,  and  its  apt  suggestion  of  the  courtiers  and 
courtesans  "thronging  the  CEil-de-Boeuf  through," 
is  it  not  a  perfect  picture  of 

The  little  great,  the  infinite  small  thing 

That  ruled  the  hour  when  Louis  Quinze  was  king? 

This  is  a  Fragonard,  as  the  other  is  a  Meissonnier. 
It  is  not  that  the  pathetic  '  Story  of  Rosina '  has 
for  its  hero  Francois  Boucher,  or  that  other  poems 
abound  in  references  to  Watteau  and  Vanloo  and 
Hogarth ;  it  is  not  even  that  these  references 
are  never  at  random,  and  always  reveal  an  exact 
knowledge  and  a  nice  appreciation ;  it  is  rather 
that  Mr.  Dobson  is  a  painter  at  heart,  in  a  degree 
far  from  common  even  in  these  days  of  so-called 
"  word-painting."  He  excels  in  the  art  of  calling 
up  a  scene  before  you  by  a  few  motions  of  his 
magic  pen  ;  and,  once  evoked,  the  scene  abides 
with  you  alway.  Mr.  E.  A.  Abbey  told  me  that 
once  in  a  nook  of  rural  England  he  happened 
suddenly  on  a  sun-dial,  and  that  lines  from  Mr. 
Dobson's  poem  with  that  title  rose  to  his  lips  at 


144 


PEN  AND  INK. 


once,  and  he  felt  as  though  nature  had  illustrated 
the  poet. 

This  delightful  effect  is  produced  by  no  abuse 
of  the  customary  devices  of  "word-painting," 
and  by  no  squandering  of  "  local  color."  On  the 
contrary,  Mr.  Dobson  is  sober  in  his  details,  and 
rarely  wastes  time  in  description.  He  hits  off  a 
scene  in  a  few  happy  strokes ;  there  is  no  piling 
of  a  Pelion  of  adjectives  on  an  Ossa  of  epithets. 
The  picture  is  painted  with  the  utmost  economy 
of  stroke.  Mr.  Dobson's  method  is  like  that  of 
the  etchers  who  work  in  the  bath  ;  his  hand  needs 
to  be  both  swift  and  sure.  Thus  there  is  always 
a  perfect  unity  of  tone  ;  there  is  always  a  shutting 
out  of  everything  which  is  not  essential  to  the  pict 
ure.  Consider  the  ballad  of  the  Armada  and  the 
'Ballad  of  Beau  Brocade,' — a  great  favorite  with 
Dr.  Holmes,  by  the  way, —  and  see  if  one  is  not 
as  truly  seventeenth  century  in  thought  and  feeling 
as  the  other  is  eighteenth  century,  while  both  are 
thoroughly  and  robustly  English.  And  how  cap- 
tivatingly  Chinese  are  the  verses  about  the  "  little 
blue  mandarin  " ! 

Of  the  French  pictures  I  have  already  spoken, 
but  inadequately,  since  I  omitted  to  cite  the  '  Prov 
erbs  in  Porcelain/'  which  I  should  ascribe  to  a 
French  poet,  if  I  knew  any  Frenchman  who  could 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  145 

have  accomplished  so  winning  a  commingling  of 
banter  and  of  grace,  of  high  breeding  and  of  play 
fulness.  How  Roman  are  the  various  Horatian 
lyrics,  and,  above  all,  how  Greek  is  'Autonoe'! 
"  '  Autonoe,'"  as  a  friend  writes  me,  "is  the  most 
purely  beautiful  of  all  Mr.  Dobson's  work.  It  does 
not  touch  the  heart,  but  it  rests  the  spirit.  Most 
so-called  '  classicism  '  shows  us  only  the  white 
temple,  the  clear  high  sky,  the  outward  beauty 
of  form  and  color.  This  gives  us  the  warm  air 
of  spring  and  the  life  that  pulses  in  a  girl's  veins 
like  the  soft  swelling  of  sap  in  a  young  tree.  This 
is  the  same  feeling  that  raises  'As  You  Like  It' 
above  all  pastoral  poetry.  Our  nineteenth  cen 
tury  sensibilities  are  so  played  on  by  the  troubles, 
the  sorrows,  the  little  vital  needs  and  anxieties 
of  the  world  around  us,  that  sometimes  it  does 
us  good  to  get  out  into  the  woods  and  fields 
of  another  world  entirely,  if  only  the  atmosphere 
is  not  chilled  and  rarefied  by  the  lack  of  the  breath 
of  humanity.  There  are  times  when  the  '  Drama 
of  the  Doctor's  Window'  would  excite  us,  but 
when  'Autonoe'  would  rest  us — and  not  with 
a  mere  selfish  intellectual  rest." 

About  twelve  years  ago,  early  in  1 876,  Mr.  Dob- 
son  began  to  turn  his  attention  to  what  are  gener 
ally  known  as  the  French  forms  of  verse,  although 


146  PEN  AND  INK. 

they  are  not  all  of  them  French.  Oddly  enough, 
it  happens  that  the  introduction,  at  Mr.  Dobson's 
hands,  of  these  French  forms  into  English  literature 
is  due — indirectly  at  least — to  an  American.  In 
criticising  Mr.  Dobson's  earlier  verses  in  'Victorian 
Poets/  Mr.  Stedman  amiably  admonished  him  that 
"such  a  poet,  to  hold  the  hearts  he  has  won,  not 
only  must  maintain  his  quality,  but  strive  to  vary 
his  style."  This  warning  from  the  American 
critic,  this  particular  Victorian  poet,  perhaps  hav 
ing  some  inner  monitions  of  his  own,  took  to 
heart,  and  he  began  at  once  to  cast  about  for  some 
new  thing.  His  first  find  was  the  'Odes  Funam- 
bulesques'  of  M.  Theodore  de  Banville,  the  reviver 
of  the  triolet,  the  rondeau,  and  the  ballade.  Here 
was  a  new  thing — a  truly  new  thing,  since  it  was 
avowedly  an  old  thing.  Mr.  Dobson  had  written 
a  set  of  triolets  already,  in  1874;  it  was  in  May, 

1876,  that  he  published  the  first  original  ballade 
ever  written  in  English,  the  firm  and  vigorous 
'Prodigals,'  slightly  irregular  in  its  repetition  of 
rhymes,  but  none  the  less  a  most  honorable  begin 
ning.     Almost  at  the  same  time  he  attempted  also 
the  rondeau  and  the  rondel.    A  year  later,  in  May, 

1877,  he  published  his  second  volume  of  verse, 
'Proverbs  in  Porcelain/  and  this,  followed  almost 
immediately  by  Mr.  Gosse's  easy  and  learned  '  Plea 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  147 

for  Certain  Exotic  Forms  of  Verse,'  in  the  CornUll 
Magazine  of  July,  1877,  drew  general  attention  to 
the  new  weapons  with  which  the  poet's  armory 
had  been  enriched. 

It  would  be  idle  to  maintain  that  they  have  met 
with  universal  acceptance.  Mr.  Stedman,  when 
introducing  the  author  to  the  American  public, 
confesses  that  he  is  not  certain  whether  to  thank 
Mr.  Dobson  or  to  condole  with  him  on  bringing 
into  fashion  the  ballade  and  the  rondeau  and  its 
fellows.  Perhaps  this  was  partly  due  to  the  sudden 
rush  of  versifiers  who  wreaked  themselves  on 
these  forms,  and  did  their  little  best  to  bring  them 
into  disrepute.  Perhaps  it  was  due  to  a  wider  dis 
like  of  metrical  limitations  and  of  all  that  tempts  the 
poet  to  expend  any  of  his  strength  otherwise  than 
on  the  straightforward  delivery  of  his  message. 

Yet  rhyme  itself,  as  M.  Edmond  Scherer  tells  us, 
"is  a  very  curious  thing,  and  it  is  a  very  com 
plex  pleasure  which  it  gives.  We  do  not  like  to 
confess  how  great  in  every  art  is  the  share  of 
difficulty  vanquished,  and  yet  it  is  difficulty  van 
quished  which  gives  the  impression  of  surprise, 
and  it  is  surprise  which  gives  interest ;  it  is  the 
unexpected  which  gives  us  the  sense  of  the  writer's 
power."  The  testimony  of  Sidney  Lanier — an 
untiring  student  of  his  art  and  its  science — is  to 


I48  PEN  AND  INK. 

the  same  effect:  "It  is  only  cleverness  and  small 
talent  which  is  afraid  of  its  spontaneity ;  the 
genius,  the  great  artist,  is  forever  ravenous  after 
new  forms,  after  technic;  he  will  follow  you  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  if  you  will  enlarge  his  ar 
tistic  science,  if  you  will  give  him  a  fresh  form." 
Finally,  the  fact  remains  that  great  poets — Dante, 
Milton,  Wordsworth — have  not  scorned  the  son 
net's  scanty  plot  of  ground  ;  and  the  sonnet  is  as 
rigid  and  quite  as  difficult,  if  you  play  the  game 
fairly,  as  either  the  ballade  or  the  rondeau.  The  ron 
deau  and  rondel,  have  they  not  a  charm  of  their 
own  when  handled  by  a  genuine  poet?  And  the 
ballade, — that  little  three-act  comedy  in  rhyme 
with  its  epigram-epilogue  of  an  envoy, — has  it 
not  both  variety  and  dignity? 

For  the  Malayan  pantoum,  as  for  the  Franco- 
Italian  sestina,  with  their  enervating  and  exasper 
ating  monotony,  there  is  really  nothing  to  be  said. 
And  perhaps  there  is  no  need  to  say  much  for  the 
tiny  triolet,  effective  as  it  may  be  for  occasional 
epigram,  or  for  the  elaborate  and  stately  chant- 
royal,  which  is  a  feat  of  skill,  no  more  and  no  less  ; 
that  Mr.  Dobson  has  done  it  as  well  as  he  has 
suggests,  perhaps,  only  the  pertinent  query  as 
to  whether  it  was  well  worth  doing.  Perhaps 
no  more  must  be  said  in  favor  of  the  dainty 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


149 


little  villanelle — a  form  which  exists  under  the 
greatest  disadvantage,  since  the  first  and  typical 
specimen,  the  ever  fresh  and  graceful  'J'ai  perdu 
ma  tourterelle '  of  Passerat,  remains  to  this  day  un 
surpassable  and  unapproached.  But  the  rondeau 
and  rondel  carry  no  such  weight,  and  in  the  hands 
of  a  master  of  metres  they  are  capable  of  being 
filled  with  a  simple  beauty  most  enjoyable.  What 
could  be  more  delicate,  more  pensive,  more  charm 
ing  than  this  rondel  of  Mr.  Dobson's? — 

THE    WANDERER. 

Love  comes  back  to  his  vacant  dwelling, — 
The  old,  old  Love  that  we  knew  of  yore ! 
We  see  him  stand  by  the  open  door, 

With  his  great  eyes  sad,  and  his  bosom  swelling. 

He  makes  as  though  in  our  arms  repelling, 
He  fain  would  lie  as  he  lay  before ; — 
Love  comes  back  to  his  vacant  dwelling, — 

The  old,  old  Love  that  we  knew  of  yore ! 

Ah,  who  shall  help  us  from  over-telling 

That  sweet  forgotten,  forbidden  lore  ! 

E'en  as  we  doubt  in  our  heart  once  more, 
With  a  rush  of  tears  to  our  eyelids  welling, 
Love  comes  back  to  his  vacant  dwelling. 

The  ballade,  however,  is  by  far  the  best  of  all 
these  forms.    I  hold  it  second  to  the  sonnet  alone, 


150  PEN  AND  INK. 

and  for  some  purposes  superior  even  to  the  sonnet. 
It  is  fair  to  say  that  it  is  the  only  one  of  the  French 
poems  which  in  France  itself  has  held  its  own 
against  the  Italian  sonnet.  The  instrument  used 
by  Clement  Marot,  by  Villon, — that  "voice  out 
of  the  slums  of  Paris,"  as  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold 
called  him, — by  La  Fontaine,  and  in  later  times  by 
Albert  Glatigny  and  Theodore  de  Banville,  is  surely 
worthy  of  honor.  In  Villon's  hands  it  has  dignity 
and  depth,  in  Glatigny's  it  has  pathos,  and  in  Marot's, 
in  Mr.  Dobson's,  and  in  Mr.  Lang's  it  has  playfulness 
and  gayety.  I  believe  Mr.  Dobson  himself  likes  the 
'  Ballade  of  Imitation '  better  than  any  of  his  other 
ballades,  while  I  confess  my  own  preference  for  the 
'Ballade  of  Prose  and  Rhyme,'  the  only  ballade  a 
double  refrain  worthy  to  be  set  alongside  Oement 
Marot's  'Frere  Lubin.'  It  is  almost  too  familiar  to 
quote  here  at  length,  and  yet  it  must  be  quoted  per 
force,  for  nohow  else  can  I  get  the  testimony  of  my 
best  witness  fully  before  the  jury : 

THE   BALLADE   OF   PROSE   AND    RHYME. 
(Ballade  It  Double  Rt/ratn.) 

When  the  ways  are  heavy  with  mire  and  rut, 

In  November  fogs,  in  December  snows, 
When  the  North  Wind  howls,  and  the  doors  are  shut, — 

There  is  place  and  enough  for  the  pains  of  prose; 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  151 

But  whenever  a  scent  from  the  whitethorn  blows, 
And  the  jasmine-stars  at  the  casement  climb, 

And  a  Rosalind-face  at  the  lattice  shows, 
Then  hey! — for  the  ripple  of  laughing  rhyme! 

When  the  brain  gets  dry  as  an  empty  nut, 

When  the  reason  stands  on  its  squarest  toes, 
When  the  mind  (like  a  beard)  has  a  "formal  cut," — 

There  is  place  and  enough  for  the  pains  of  prose ; 

But  whenever  the  May-blood  stirs  and  glows, 
And  the  young  year  draws  to  the  "  golden  prime" 

And  Sir  Romeo  sticks  in  his  ear  a  rose, — 
Then  hey !  — for  the  ripple  of  laughing  rhyme  ! 

In  a  theme  where  the  thoughts  have  a  pedant-strut, 

In  a  changing  quarrel  of  "Ayes"  and  "Noes," 
In  a  starched  procession  of  " If"  and  "But," — 

There  is  place  and  enough  for  the  pains  of  prose; 

But  whenever  a  soft  glance  softer  grows 
And  the  light  hours  dance  to  the  trysting-time, 

And  the  secret  is  told  "that  no  one  knows," — 
Then  hey! — for  the  ripple  of  laughing  rhyme ! 

ENVOY. 

In  the  work-a-day  world, — for  its  needs  and  woes, 
There  is  place  and  enough  for  the  pains  of  prose ; 
But  whenever  the  May-bells  clash  and  chime, 
Then  hey  !  —  for  the  ripple  of  laughing  rhyme ! 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  these  poems  Mr.  Dobson 
proves  that  the  rondel  at  its  best  and  the  ballade 
at  its  finest,  belong  to  the  poetry  of  feeling  and 


152  PEN  AND  INK. 

not  to  the  poetry  of  ingenuity.  It  seems  to  me, 
also,  that  the  poet  has  been  helped  by  his  restric 
tions.  Here  are  cases  where  a  faith  in  these 
forms  is  justified  by  works.  We  may  ask,  fairly 
enough,  whether  either  of  these  poems  would  be 
as  good  in  any  other  shape.  From  the  compres 
sion  enforced  by  the  rules,  they  have  gained  in 
compactness,  and  therefore  in  swiftness.  They 
are,  in  Miltonic  phrase,  "  woven  close,  both  mat 
ter,  form,  and  style." 

It  is  to  Mr.  Dobson  primarily  and  to  his  fellow- 
workers  that  the  credit  is  due  of  acclimatizing 
these  exotic  metres  in  English  literature.  It  is  not 
that  he  was  absolutely  the  earliest  to  write  them 
in  English  —  excepting  only  the  ballade,  of  which 
the  'Prodigals'  was  the  first.  Chaucer  wrote 
rondels,  the  elder  Wyatt  rondeaus,  and  Patrick 
Carey,  about  1651,  was  guilty  of  devotional  trio 
lets  !  But  England  was  not  then  ready  for  the 
conquest,  and  the  forms  crossed  the  Channel,  like 
the  Norseman,  just  to  set  foot  on  land  and  then 
away  again.  Even  in  France  they  had  faded  out  of 
sight.  Moliere  speaks  slightingly  of  ballades  as 
old-fashioned.  Only  in  our  own  times,  since  M. 
de  Banville  set  the  example,  has  the  true  form 
been  understood.  Wyatt's  rondeaus  were  printed 
as  though  they  were  defective  sonnets.  Both 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


153 


Longfellow  and  Bryant  translated  Clement  Marot's 
'  Frere  Lubin,'  and  neither  of  them  knew  it  was  a 
ballade  a  doitble  refrain.  Nor  is  Rossetti's  noble 
rendering  of  Villon's  famous  '  Ballade  of  Dead 
Ladies  '  accurately  formal.  Mr.  Lang,  in  his  '  Bal 
lads  and  Lyrics  of  Old  France'  (1872),  was  plainly 
on  the  right  track,  but  he  failed  then  to  reach  the 
goal.  At  last  the  time  was  ripe. 

It  was  doubtless  again  due  to  Mr.  Stedman's 
warning  that,  although  there  is  no  work  which 
when  well  done  secures  a  welcome  as  instant  as 
vers  de  societe,  there  is  also  "none  from  which  the 
world  so  lightly  turns  upon  the  arrival  of  a  new 
favorite  with  a  different  note," — it  was  this  wise 
warning  which  led  Mr.  Dobson  to  vary  his  style, 
not  only  with  the  revival  of  the  French  forms,  but 
also  with  fables  and  with  a  slight  attempt  at  the 
drama  —  in  so  far  as  the  dainty  and  delicate 
'  Proverbs  in  Porcelain  '  are  substantial  enough  to 
be  called  dramatic.  Like  John  Gay  and  like  the 
late  John  G.  Saxe,  Mr.  Dobson  took  to  rhyming 
fables  after  making  a  mark  by  more  characteristic 
verse.  And  Mr.  Dobson's  fables,  good  as  they 
are,  and  pertinent  and  brightsome  as  they  needs 
must  be,  since  he  wrote  them,  are  like  Gay's  and 
Saxe's  in  that  they  are  not  their  author's  best 
work.  The  fault  plainly  is  in  the  fable  form, 


154  PEN  AND  INK. 

if  Mr.  Dobson's  fables  are  not  as  entertaining  as 
his  other  poems ;  at  any  rate,  I  am  free  to  confess 
that  I  like  his  other  work  better. 

I  have  to  confess,  also,  with  great  doubt  and 
diffidence,  that  the  half-dozen  little  dialogues 
called  'Proverbs  in  Porcelain,'  airy  as  they  are 
and  exquisite,  are  less  favorites  with  me  than  they 
are  with  critics  whose  taste  I  cannot  but  think 
finer  than  mine — Mr.  Aldrich,  for  instance,  and 
Mr.  Stedman.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  I  like  them 
less  because  they  assume  a  dramatic  form  without 
warrant.  The  essence  of  the  drama  is  action,  and 
in  these  beautiful  and  witty  playlets  there  is  but 
the  ghost  of  an  action.  I  doubt  not  that  I  am 
unfair  to  these  dialogues,  and  that  my  attitude 
toward  them  is  that  of  the  dramatic  critic  rather 
than  that  of  the  critic  of  poetry  pure  and  simple. 
But  that  is  their  own  fault  for  assuming  a  virtue 
they  have  not.  To  counterbalance  this  harsh 
treatment  of  the  '  Proverbs  in  Porcelain,'  I  must 
declare  that  I  take  more  pleasure  in  '  A  Virtuoso ' 
than  do  most  of  Mr.  Dobson's  admirers,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  I  find  in  '  A  Virtuoso '  all  the 
condensed  compactness  of  the  best  stage  dialogue, 
where  a  phrase  has  to  be  stripped  to  run  for  its 
life.  To  be  read  quickly  by  the  fireside,  '  A  Vir 
tuoso  '  may  seem  forced ;  but  to  be  acted  or 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  155 

recited,  it  is  just  right.  I  see  in  this  cold  and  cut 
ting  poem,  masterly  in  its  synthesis  of  selfish 
symptoms,  a  regard  for  theatrical  perspective,  and 
a  selection  and  a  heightening  of  effect  in  accord 
ance  with  the  needs  of  the  stage,  which  I  confess 
I  fail  to  find  in  the  seemingly  more  dramatic 
'Proverbs  in  Porcelain.'  Most  people,  however, 
liking  Mr.  Dobson  mainly  for  playful  tenderness 
and  tender  playfulness,  dislike  the  marble  hard 
ness  of  'A  Virtuoso/ just  as  they  are  annoyed  by 
the  tone  of  'A  Love-letter,'  one  of  the  poet's 
cleverest  pieces.  If  Mr.  Dobson  yielded  to  the 
likes  and  dislikes  of  his  admirers  he  would  soon 
sink  into  sentimentality,  and  he  would  never  dare 
to  write  as  funny  as  he  can.  There  are  readers 
who  are  shocked  and  pained  when  they  discover 
the  non-existence  of  '  Dorothy.' 

After  all,  this  is  perhaps  the  highest  compli 
ment  that  readers  can  pay  the  writer,  when  they 
enter  so  heartily  into  his  creations  that  they  revolt 
against  any  trick  he  may  play  upon  them.  And 
in  these  days  of  haste  without  rest,  it  ill  becomes 
us  to  fling  the  first  stone  at  an  author  who  is 
enamored  of  elusive  perfection  and  who  is  willing 
to  spare  no  pains  to  give  us  his  best  and  only  his 
best.  He  may  be  thankful  that  he  is  not  as  infer 
tile  on  the  one  hand  as  Waller,  who  was  "the 


1 56 


PEN  AND  INK. 


greater  part  of  a  summer  correcting  ten  lines  for 
Her  Grace  of  York's  copy  of  Tasso,"  or  as  reckless 
on  the  other  hand  as  Martial,  who  disdained  to 
elaborate : 

Turpe  est  difficile  habere  nugas 
Et  stultus  labor  est  ineptiarum. 

Not  infrequently  do  we  find  Mr.  Frederick 
Locker  and  Mr.  Dobson  classed  together  as  though 
their  work  was  fundamentally  of  the  same  kind. 
The  present  writer  has  to  plead  guilty  to  the 
charge  of  inadvertently  and  inaccurately  linking 
the  two  names  in  critical  discussion.  The  like 
ness  is  accidental  rather  than  essential,  and  the 
hasty  conjunction  is  due,  perhaps,  more  to  the  fact 
that  they  are  friends,  and  that  they  both  write  what 
has  to  be  called  vers  de  societe,  than  to  any  real  like 
ness  between  their  works.  The  fact  is,  the  more 
clearly  we  define,  and  the  more  precisely  we  limit 
the  phrase  vers  de  societe,  the  more  exactly  do  we 
find  the  best  and  most  characteristic  of  Mr.  Locker's 
poems  agreeing  with  the  definition  and  lying  at 
ease  within  the  limitation  ;  while  the  best  and 
most  characteristic  of  Mr.  Dobson's  poems  would 
be  left  outside.  In  his  criticism  of  Praed's  work 
prefixed  to  the  selection  from  his  poems  in  the 
fourth  volume  of  Mr.  Ward's  '  English  Poets '  Mr. 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


'57 


Dobson  declares  that  "  as  a  writer  of '  society  verse ' 
in  its  exacter  sense,  Praed  was  justly  acknowl 
edged  to  be  supreme,"  and  then  he  adds,  "We 
say  'exacter  sense'  because  it  has  of  late  become 
the  fashion  to  apply  this  vague  term  in  the  vaguest 
way  possible  so  as  to  include  almost  all  verse  but 
the  highest  and  the  lowest.  This  is  manifestly  a 
mistake.  Society  verse  as  Praed  understood  it, 
and  as  we  understand  it  in  Praed,  treats  almost  ex 
clusively  of  the  votum,  timor,  ira,  voluptas  (and 
especially  the  voluptas)  of  that  charmed  circle  of 
uncertain  limits  known  conventionally  as  'good  so 
ciety' — those  latter-day  Athenians  who,  in  town 
and  country,  spend  their  time  in  telling  or  hearing 
some  new  thing,  and  whose  graver  and  deeper 
impulses  are  subordinated  to  a  code  of  artificial 
manners."  Of  these  it  is  indisputable  that  Mr. 
Locker  is,  as  Praed  was,  the  laureate-elect,  and 
that  ' '  the  narrow  world  in  which  they  move  is  the 
main  haunt  and  region  of  his  song."  Mr.  Locker 
writes  as  one  to  the  manner  born,  and  nowhere 
reveals  the  touch  of  the  parvenu  which  betrayed 
Praed  now  and  again.  In  the  exact  sense  of  the 
phrase,  Mr.  Locker,  like  Praed,  is  the  poet  of  so 
ciety,  which  Mr.  Dobson  is  not — because,  for  one 
thing,  we  may  doubt  whether  society  is  of  quite  so 
much  interest  or  importance  or  significance  to  him 


158  PEN  AND  INK. 

as  to  the  author  of  'London  Lyrics.'  The  distinc 
tion  is  evasive,  and  has  to  be  suggested  rather  than 
said  ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  real  and  vital.  It  is, 
perhaps,  rather  that  Mr.  Dobson  is  more  a  man 
of  letters,  while  Mr.  Locker  is  more  a  man  of 
the  world.  Certainly  Mr.  Dobson  has  a  more  con 
sciously  literary  style  than  Mr.  Locker,  a  style 
less  simple  and  less  direct.  Henri  Monnier  would 
say  that  Mr.  Dobson  had  more  mots  d'auteur. 
Admirable  as  is  Mr.  Dobson's  verse,  it  has  not 
the  condensed  clearness  nor  the  incisive  vigor  of 
Mr.  Locker's.  One  inclines  to  the  opinion  that 
the  author  of  '  London  Lyrics '  is  willing  to  make 
more  sacrifices  for  vernacular  terseness  than  the 
author  of  'Vignettes  in  Rhyme/  It  is  not  that 
Mr.  Dobson  is  one  of  the  poets  who  keep  their 
choicest  wares  locked  in  an  inner  safe  guarded  by 
heavy  bolts,  and  to  whose  wisdom  no  man  may 
help  himself  unless  he  has  the  mystic  letters  which 
unlock  the  massive  doors,  but  he  is  not  quite  will 
ing  to  be  simple  to  the  point  of  bareness  as  is  Mr. 
Locker,  who  wears  his  heart  upon  his  sleeve.  In 
some  things  Mr.  Locker  is  like  Mr.  du  Maurier, 
even  in  the  little  Gallic  twist,  while  Mr.  Dobson 
is  rather  like  Randolph  Caldecott  or  our  own 
Abbey,  with  the  quaint  Englishry  of  whose  style 
Mr.  Dobson's  has  much  in  common.  Yet  after  say- 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS. 


159 


ing  this  I  feel  inclined  to  take  it  all  back,  for  I  recall 
together  'This  was  the  Pompadour's  fan'  and 
'This  is  Gerty's  glove' — and  here  it  is  Mr.  Dob- 
son  who  is  brilliant  and  French  and  Mr.  Locker 
who  is  more  simple  in  sentiment  and  more  Eng 
lish.  Yet  again  it  is  the  worldly-minded  Mr. 
Locker  who  declares  that 

The  world's  as  ugly,  aye,  as  sin  — 
And  nearly  as  delightful, — 

a  sentiment  wholly  foreign  to  Mr.  Dobson's  feel 
ings.  This  suggests  that  there  is  a  certain  town 
stamp  in  the  appropriately  named  'London  Lyrics' 
not  to  be  seen  in  '  Vignettes  in  Rhyme,'  some  of 
which  are  vignettes  from  rural  nature.  But  both 
books  are  boons  to  be  thankful  for.  Both  are 
havens  of  rest  in  days  of  depression  ;  both  have  a 
joyousness  most  tonic  and  wholesome  in  these 
days  when  the  general  tone  of  literature  is  gray ; 
both  preach  the  gospel  of  sanity,  and  both  may 
serve  as  antiseptics  against  sentimental  decay. 

Here  occasion  serves  to  say  that  each  of  these 
masters  of  what  Dr.  Johnson,  while  declaring  its 
difficulty,  called  "easy  verse,"  has  set  forth  his 
views  of  the  art  of  writing  vers  de  societe.  Mr. 
Locker  made  his  declaration  of  faith  in  the  admi 
rable  preface,  all  too  brief,  to  the  selection  of  vers 


l6o  PEN  AND  INK. 

de  societe  and  -vers  d' occasion,  which  he  published 
in  1867  as  'Lyra  Elegantiarum.'  Mr.  Dobson,  at 
the  request  of  the  present  writer,  drew  up  a  code 
for  the  composition  of  familiar  verse.  Here  are 
Mr.  Dobson 's  'Twelve  Good  Rules': 

I.  Never  be  vulgar. 
II.  Avoid  slang  and  puns. 
HI.  Avoid  inversions. 
IV.  Be  sparing  of  long  words. 
V.  Be  colloquial,  but  not  commonplace. 
VI.  Choose  the  lightest  and  brightest  of  measures. 
VII.  Let  the  rhymes  be  frequent,  but  not  forced. 
VIII.  Let  them  be  rigorously  exact  to  the  ear. 
IX.  Be  as  witty  as  you  like. 
X.  Be  serious  by  accident. 
XL  Be  pathetic  with  the  greatest  discretion. 
XII.  Never  ask  if  the  writer  of  these  rules  has  observed  them 
himself. 

Mr.  Dobson  has  not  confined  his  labors  in  prose 
to  the  canons  of  familiar  verse.  Although  it  is 
as  a  poet  that  he  is  most  widely  known,  his  prose 
has  qualities  of  its  own.  Besides  scattering  maga 
zine  articles,  it  includes  half  a  dozen  apt  and  alert 
criticisms  in  Mr.  Ward's  '  English  Poets,'  the  final 
chapter  in  Mr.  Lang's  little  book  on  the  '  Library,' 
and  prefaces  to  a  fac-simile  reprint  of  '  Robin 
son  Crusoe,'  and  to  the  selection  from  Herrick's 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  jgi 

poems,  illustrated  by  Mr.  Abbey  with  such  abun 
dant  sympathy  and  such  delightful  grace  and 
fancy.  More  important  than  these  are  the  vol 
umes  in  which  Mr.  Dobson  has  given  us  selec 
tions  from  the  best  of  the  '  Eighteenth  Century 
Essays,'  and  in  which  he  has  introduced  and  an 
notated  the  '  Fables  '  of  John  Gay,  the  '  Poems ' 
and  'Vicar  of  Wakefield  '  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  the 
'  Essays '  of  Richard  Steele,  and  the  '  Barbier  de 
Seville'  of  Beaumarchais. 

Still  more  important  are  the  biographical  sketches 
of  his  favorite  Hogarth,  and  of  Bewick  and  his  pu 
pils  ;  and  the  lives  of  Fielding,  Steele,  and  Gold 
smith.  It  was  to  Mr.  Dobson's  biography  that  Mr. 
Lowell  referred  when  he  unveiled  Miss  Margaret 
Thomas's  bust  of  Fielding  in  the  Somersetshire 
hall.  In  the  course  of  his  speech,  as  rich  and  elo 
quent  as  only  his  speeches  are,  Mr.  Lowell  said 
that  "Mr.  Austin  Dobson  has  done,  perhaps,  as 
true  a  service  as  one  man  of  letters  ever  did  to 
another,  by  reducing  what  little  is  known  of  the 
life  of  Fielding  from  chaos  to  coherence,  by  ridding 
it  of  fable,  by  correcting  and  coordinating  dates, 
by  cross-examining  tradition  till  it  stammeringly 
confessed  that  it  had  no  visible  means  of  subsist 
ence,  and  has  thus  enabled  us  to  get  some  authen 
tic  glimpse  of  the  man  as  he  really  was.  Lessing 


162  PEN  AND  INK. 

gives  the  title  of  '  Rescues '  to  the  essays  in  which 
he  strove  to  rehabilitate  such  authors  as  had  been, 
in  his  judgment,  unjustly  treated  by  their  contem 
poraries,  and  Mr.  Dobson's  essay  deserves  to  be 
reckoned  in  the  same  category.  He  has  rescued 
the  body  of  Fielding  from  beneath  the  swinish 
hoofs  which  were  trampling  it  as  once  they  tram 
pled  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha,  whom  Fielding  so 
heartily  admired." 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  study  of  practice 
of  verse  is  the  best  of  trainings  for  the  writing  of 
prose.  Mr.  Dobson's  prose  style  is  firm  and  pre 
cise  ;  it  has  no  taint  of  the  Corinthian  luxuriance 
which  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  castigated,  or  of 
the  passionate  emphasis  which  passes  for  criti 
cism  in  some  quarters.  His  ideal  in  prose  writ 
ing  is  a  style  exact  and  cool  and  straightforward. 
Sometimes  the  reader  might  like  a  little  more 
glow.  It  is  not  that  his  prose  style  is  sapless, 
for  it  has  life ;  it  is  rather  that  it  is  generally  cut- 
and-dried  of  malice  prepense.  He  can  write 
prose  with  more  color  and  more  heat  when  he 
chooses,  as  he  who  will  may  see  in  the  par 
agraphs  of  the  preface  to  Mr.  Abbey's  '  Herrick.' 
In  general,  however,  Mr.  Dobson  forgets  that  he 
is  a  poet  when  he  takes  up  his  pen  to  write  prose, 
and  he  remembers  only  that  he  is  an  antiquary 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  163 

and  an  investigator.  In  fact,  his  prose  is  the  prose 
of  a  scientific  historian ;  and  Mr.  Dobson  has  the 
scientific  virtues, — the  passion  for  exactness,  the 
untiring  patience  in  research,  and  the  unwilling 
ness  to  set  down  anything  which  has  not  been 
proved.  If  we  apply  De  Quincey's  classification, 
we  should  declare  that  Mr.  Dobson's  poetry — like 
all  true  poetry — belongs  to  the  literature  of 
power,  while  his  prose  belongs  to  the  literature 
of  knowledge. 

It  is  to  be  remarked,  also,  that  the  poet  some 
times  remembers  that  he  is  an  antiquary,  also. 
Here  Mr.  Dobson  is  not  unlike  Walter  Scott,  who 
was  also  an  antiquary-poet,  with  a  strong  love  for 
the  past,  and  a  gift  for  making  dead  figures  start 
to  life  at  his  bidding.  Much  of  Mr.  Dobson's 
poetry  is  like  his  prose  in  that  it  is  based  on  re 
search.  His  learning  in  the  manners  and  customs 
of  past  times  is  most  minute.  Especially  rich  is 
his  knowledge  of  the  people  and  of  the  vocabulary 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  This  is  the  result  of 
indefatigable  delving  in  the  records  of  the  past. 
His  acquaintance  with  the  ways  and  words  of  the 
contemporaries  of  Steele  and  of  Fielding  and  of 
Hogarth  is  as  thorough  as  Lord  Tennyson's  knowl 
edge  of  botany,  for  instance ;  and  it  is  the  proof 
of  as  much  minute  observation.  Although  Mr. 


1 64  PEN  AND  INK. 

Dobson  disdains  all  second-hand  information,  and 
likes  to  verify  facts  for  himself,  he  never  lets  his 
learning  burden  his  verse.  That  runs  as  freely 
and  as  trippingly  as  though  the  seeking  of  the  facts 
on  which  it  might  be  founded  had  not  been  a  labor 
of  love,  for  which  no  toil  was  too  great.  The 
'  Ballad  of  Beau  Brocade '  is  a  strong  and  simple 
tale,  seemingly  calling  for  no  special  study  ;  but  it 
does  not  contain  a  single  word  not  in  actual  use  at 
the  time  of  the  guide-book  where  it  germinated, 
and  in  print  in  the  pages  of  the  Gentleman's  Mag- 
aqine  of  that  reign.  In  like  manner,  in  the  noble 
and  virile  ballade  of  the  Armada,  which  the  Virgin 
Queen  might  have  joyed  to  accept,  there  is  no 
single  word  not  in  Gervase  Markham. 

Writing  always  out  of  the  fulness  of  knowl 
edge,  there  is  nowhere  anything  amateurish,  and 
there  is  always  a  perfect  certainty  of  touch.  His 
work — as  Mr.  W.  C.  Brownell  has  told  us — is 
"as  natural  an  outgrowth  as  Lamb's."  And  he 
is  like  Lamb  in  that  capacity  for  taking  infinite 
pains  which  has  been  held  the  true  trade-mark  of 
genius.  He  is  like  Lamb,  again,  in  that  he  has 
resolutely  recognized  his  limitations.  Ruler  of  his 
own  territory,  he  has  carefully  refrained  from 
crossing  his  neighbor's  boundaries.  Indeed,  he  is 
as  admirable  an  instance  as  one  could  wish  of  the 


TWO  LATTER-DAY  LYRISTS.  ^5 

exactness  of  Swift's  dictum,  "It  is  an  uncontrolled 
truth  that  no  man  ever  made  an  ill  figure  who 
understood  his  own  talents,  nor  a  good  one  who 
mistook  them." 

(1884) 


VII 
THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR 


THE   SONGS   OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


NATIONAL  hymn  is  one  of  the 
things  which  cannot  be  made  to 
order.  No  man  has  ever  yet  sat  him 
down  and  taken  up  his  pen  and  said, 
"I  will  write  a  national  hymn,"  and 
composed  either  words  or  music  which  a  nation 
was  willing  to  take  for  its  own.  The  making  of 
the  song  of  the  people  is  a  happy  accident,  not  to 
be  accomplished  by  taking  thought.  It  must  be 
the  result  of  fiery  feeling  long  confined,  and  sud 
denly  finding  vent  in  burning  words  or  moving 
strains.  Sometimes  the  heat  and  the  pressure 
of  emotion  have  been  fierce  enough  and  intense 
enough  to  call  forth  at  once  both  words  and 
music,  and  to  weld  them  together  indissolubly 
once  and  for  all.  Almost  always  the  maker  of 
the  song  does  not  suspect  the  abiding  value  of  his 
work ;  he  has  wrought  unconsciously,  moved  by 
a  power  within;  he  has  written  for  immediate 


109 


1 70  PEN  AND  INK. 

relief  to  himself,  and  with  no  thought  of  fame  or 
the  future ;  he  has  builded  better  than  he  knew. 
The  great  national  lyric  is  the  result  of  the  con 
junction  of  the  hour  and  the  man.  Monarchs  can 
not  command  it,  and  even  poets  are  often  powerless 
to  achieve  it.  No  one  of  the  great  national  hymns 
has  been  written  by  a  great  poet.  But  for  his 
single  immortal  lyric,  neither  the  author  of  the 
'  Marseillaise '  nor  the  author  of  the  '  Wacht  am 
Rhein '  would  have  his  line  in  the  biographical  dic 
tionaries.  But  when  a  song  has  once  taken  root 
in  the  hearts  of  a  people,  time  itself  is  powerless 
against  it.  The  flat  and  feeble  'Partant  pour  la 
Syrie,'  which  a  filial  fiat  made  the  hymn  of  im 
perial  France,  had  to  give  way  to  the  strong  and 
virile  notes  of  the  'Marseillaise,'  when  need  was 
to  arouse  the  martial  spirit  of  the  French  in  1 870. 
The  noble  measures  of  '  God  Save  the  King,'  as 
simple  and  dignified  a  national  hymn  as  any  coun 
try  can  boast,  lift  up  the  hearts  of  the  English 
people  ;  and  the  brisk  tune  of  the  '  British  Grena 
diers  '  has  swept  away  many  a  man  into  the  ranks 
of  the  recruiting  regiment.  The  English  are  rich 
in  war  tunes ;  and  the  pathetic  '  Girl  I  left  behind 
me'  encourages  and  sustains  both  those  who  go  to 
the  front  and  those  who  remain  at  home.  Here 
in  the  United  States  we  have  no  'Marseillaise/  no 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


171 


'God  Save  the  King,'  no  'Wacht  am  Rhein';  we 
have  but  '  Yankee  Doodle  '  and  the  '  Star-spangled 
Banner.'  More  than  one  enterprising  poet,  and 
more  than  one  aspiring  musician,  has  volunteered 
to  take  the  contract  to  supply  the  deficiency;  as 
yet  no  one  has  succeeded.  'Yankee  Doodle'  we 
got  during  the  Revolution,  and  the  '  Star-spangled 
Banner '  was  the  gift  of  the  War  of  1 8 1 2 ;  from  the 
Civil  War  we  have  received  at  least  two  war  songs 
which,  as  war  songs  simply,  are  stronger  and 
finer  than  either  of  these — 'John  Brown's  Body' 
and  'Marching  Through  Georgia.' 

Of  the  lyrical  outburst  which  the  war  called  forth 
but  little  trace  is  now  to  be  detected  in  literature 
except  by  special  students.  In  most  cases  neither 
words  nor  music  have  had  vitality  enough  to  sur 
vive  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Chiefly,  indeed,  two 
things  only  survive,  one  Southern  and  the  other 
Northern ;  one  a  war-cry  in  verse,  the  other  a  mar 
tial  tune  :  one  is  the  lyric  'My  Maryland,'  and  the 
other  is  the  marching  song  'John  Brown's  Body.' 
The  origin  and  development  of  the  latter,  the  rude 
chant  to  which  a  million  of  the  soldiers  of  the 
Union  kept  time,  is  uncertain  and  involved  in  dis 
pute.  The  history  of  the  former  may  be  declared 
exactly,  and  by  the  courtesy  of  those  who  did 
the  deed — for  the  making  of  a  war  song  is  of  a 


1 72  PEN  AND  INK. 

truth  a  deed  at  arms — I  am  enabled  to  state  fully 
the  circumstances  under  which  it  was  written,  set 
to  music,  and  first  sung  before  the  soldiers  of  the 
South. 

'  My  Maryland '  was  written  by  Mr.  James  R. 
Randall,  a  native  of  Baltimore,  and  now  residing 
in  Augusta,  Georgia.  The  poet  was  a  professor 
of  English  literature  and  the  classics  in  Poydras 
College  at  Pointe  Coupee,  on  the  Fausse  Riviere, 
in  Louisiana,  about  seven  miles  from  the  Missis 
sippi;  and  there  in  April,  1861,  he  read  in  the 
New  Orleans  Delta  the  news  of  the  attack  on  the 
Massachusetts  troops  as  they  passed  through  Bal 
timore.  "  This  account  excited  me  greatly,"  Mr. 
Randall  wrote  in  answer  to  my  request  for  infor 
mation  ;  "I  had  long  been  absent  from  my  native 
city,  and  the  startling  event  there  inflamed  my 
mind.  That  night  I  could  not  sleep,  for  my 
nerves  were  all  unstrung,  and  I  could  not  dismiss 
what  I  had  read  in  the  paper  from  my  mind. 
About  midnight  I  rose,  lit  a  candle,  and  went  to 
my  desk.  Some  powerful  spirit  appeared  to  pos 
sess  me,  and  almost  involuntarily  I  proceeded  to 
write  the  song  of  '  My  Maryland/  I  remember 
that  the  idea  appeared  to  first  take  shape  as  music 
in  the  brain — some  wild  air  that  I  cannot  now  re 
call.  The  whole  poem  was  dashed  off  rapidly 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


173 


when  once  begun.  It  was  not  composed  in  cold 
blood,  but  under  what  may  be  called  a  conflagration 
of  the  senses,  if  not  an  inspiration  of  the  intellect. 
I  was  stirred  to  a  desire  for  some  way  linking  my 
name  with  that  of  my  native  State,  if  not  *  with 
my  land's  language/  But  I  never  expected  to  do 
this  with  one  single,  supreme  effort,  and  no  one 
was  more  surprised  than  I  was  at  the  widespread 
and  instantaneous  popularity  of  the  lyric  I  had  been 
so  strangely  stimulated  to  write."  Mr.  Randall 
read  the  poem  the  next  morning  to  the  college  boys, 
and  at  their  suggestion  sent  it  to  the  Delta,  in  which 
it  was  first  printed,  and  from  which  it  was  copied 
into  nearly  every  Southern  journal.  "I  did  not 
concern  myself  much  about  it,  but  very  soon, 
from  all  parts  of  the  country,  there  was  borne  to 
me,  in  my  remote  place  of  residence,  evidence 
that  I  had  made  a  great  hit,  and  that,  whatever 
might  be  the  fate  of  the  Confederacy,  the  song 
would  survive  it." 

Published  in  the  last  days  of  April,  1861,  when 
every  eye  was  fixed  on  the  border  States,  the  stir 
ring  stanzas  of  the  Tyrtaean  bard  appeared  in  the 
very  nick  of  time.  There  is  often  a  feeling  afloat 
in  the  minds  of  men,  undefined  and  vague  for 
want  of  one  to  give  it  form,  and  held  in  solution, 
as  it  were,  until  a  chance  word  dropped  in  the  ear 


174  PEN  AND  INK. 

of  a  poet  suddenly  crystallizes  this  feeling  into 
song,  in  which  all  may  see  clearly  and  sharply  re 
flected  what  in  their  own  thought  was  shapeless 
and  hazy.  It  was  Mr.  Randall's  good  fortune  to 
be  the  instrument  through  which  the  South  spoke. 
By  a  natural  reaction  his  burning  lines  helped  to 
fire  the  Southern  heart.  To  do  their  work  well, 
his  words  needed  to  be  wedded  to  music.  Unlike 
the  authors  of  the  '  Star-spangled  Banner '  and  the 
'Marseillaise,'  the  author  of  'My  Maryland'  had 
not  written  it  to  fit  a  tune  already  familiar.  It 
was  left  for  a  lady  of  Baltimore  to  lend  the  lyric 
the  musical  wings  it  needed  to  enable  it  to  reach 
every  camp-fire  of  the  Southern  armies.  To  the 
courtesy  of  this  lady,  then  Miss  Hetty  Gary,  and 
now  the  wife  of  Professor  H.  Newell  Martin,  of 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  I  am  indebted  for  a  pict 
uresque  description  of  the  marriage  of  the  words 
to  the  music,  and  of  the  first  singing  of  the  song 
before  the  Southern  troops. 

The  house  of  Mrs.  Martin's  father  was  the 
headquarters  for  the  Southern  sympathizers  of  Bal 
timore.  Correspondence,  money,  clothing,  sup 
plies  of  all  kinds  went  thence  through  the  lines  to 
the  young  men  of  the  city  who  had  joined  the 
Confederate  army.  "  The  enthusiasm  of  the  girls 
who  worked  and  of  the  '  boys '  who  watched  for 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  175 

their  chance  to  slip  through  the  lines  to  Dixie's  land 
found  vent  and  inspiration  in  such  patriotic  songs 
as  could  be  made  or  adapted  to  suit  our  needs. 
The  glee  club  was  to  hold  its  meeting  in  our  parlors 
one  evening  early  in  June,  and  my  sister,  Miss 
Jenny  Gary,  being  the  only  musical  member  of  the 
family,  had  charge  of  the  programme  on  the  occasion . 
With  a  school-girl's  eagerness  to  score  a  success, 
she  resolved  to  secure  some  new  and  ardent  ex 
pression  of  feelings  that  by  this  time  were  wrought 
up  to  the  point  of  explosion.  In  vain  she  searched 
through  her  stock  of  songs  and  airs — nothing 
seemed  intense  enough  to  suit  her.  Aroused  by 
her  tone  of  despair,  I  came  to  the  rescue  with  the 
suggestion  that  she  should  adapt  the  words  of 
'Maryland,  my  Maryland/  which  had  been  con 
stantly  on  my  lips  since  the  appearance  of  the  lyric 
a  few  days  before  in  the  South.  I  produced  the 
paper  and  began  declaiming  the -verses.  'Lauriger 
Horatius/  she  exclaimed,  and  in  a  flash  the  immortal 
song  found  voice  in  the  stirring  air  so  perfectly 
adapted  to  it.  That  night,  when  her  contralto  voice 
rang  out  the  stanzas,  the  refrain  rolled  forth  from 
every  throat  present  without  pause  or  preparation ; 
and  the  enthusiasm  communicated  itself  with  such 
effect  to  a  crowd  assembled  beneath  our  open  win 
dows  as  to  endanger  seriously  the  liberties  of  the 
party." 


176  PEN  AND  INK. 

'Lauriger  Horatius'  has  long  been  a  favorite 
college  song,  and  it  had  been  introduced  into  the 
Gary  household  by  Mr.  Burton  N.  Harrison,  then  a 
Yale  student.  The  air  to  which  it  is  sung  is  used 
also  for  a  lovely  German  lyric,  'Tannenbaum,  O 
Tannenbaum/  which  Longfellow  has  translated  '  O 
Hemlock  Tree.'  The  transmigration  of  tunes  is  too 
large  and  fertile  a  subject  for  me  to  do  more  here 
than  refer  to  it.  The  taking  of  the  air  of  a  jovial 
college  song  to  use  as  the  setting  of  a  fiery  war- 
lyric  may  seem  strange  and  curious,  but  only  to 
those  who  are  not  familiar  with  the  adventures 
and  transformations  a  tune  is  often  made  to  under 
go.  Hopkinson's  'Hail  Columbia!'  for  example, 
was  written  to  the  tune  of  the  '  President's  March,' 
just  as  Mrs.  Howe's  '  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic ' 
was  written  to  'John  Brown's  Body/  The  '  Wear 
ing  of  the  Green,'  of  the  Irishman,  is  sung  to  the 
same  air  as  the  '  Benny  Havens,  O  ! '  of  the  West- 
Pointer.  The  'Star-spangled  Banner'  has  to  make 
shift  with  the  second-hand  music  of 'Anacreon  in 
Heaven,'  while  our  other  national  air,  'Yankee 
Doodle/  uses  over  the  notes  of  an  old  English 
nursery  rhyme,  'Lucy  Locket/  once  a  personal 
lampoon  in  the  days  of  the  'Beggars'  Opera/  and 
now  surviving  in  the  '  Baby's  Opera'  of  Mr.  Walter 
Crane.  'My  Country,  'tis  of  Thee/  is  set  to  the 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


177 


truly  British  tune  of '  God  Save  the  King,'  the  origin 
of  which  is  doubtful,  as  it  is  claimed  by  the  French 
and  the  Germans  as  well  as  the  English.  In  the 
hour  of  battle  a  war-tune  is  subject  to  the  right 
of  capture,  and,  like  the  cannon  taken  from  the 
enemy,  it  is  turned  against  its  maker. 

To  return  to  'My  Maryland': — a  few  weeks 
after  the  welding  of  the  words  and  the  music,  Mrs. 
Martin,  with  her  husband  and  sister,  went  through 
the  lines,  convoying  several  trunks  full  of  military 
clothing,  and  wearing  concealed  about  her  person 
a  flag  bearing  the  arms  of  Maryland,  a  gift  from  the 
ladies  of  Baltimore  to  the  Maryland  troops  in  the 
Confederate  army.  In  consequence  of  reports 
which  were  borne  back  to  the  Union  authorities  the 
ladies  were  forbidden  to  return.  "We  were  liv 
ing,"  so  Mrs.  Martin  writes  me,  "in  Virginia  in 
exile,  when,  shortly  after  the  battle  of  Manassas, 
General  Beauregard,  hearing  of  our  labors  and 
sufferings  in  behalf  of  the  Marylanders  who  had 
already  done  such  gallant  service  in  his  command, 
invited  us  to  visit  them  at  his  headquarters  near 
Fairfax  Court  House,  sending  a  pass  and  an  escort 
for  us,  and  the  friends  by  whom  we  should  be 
accompanied.  Our  party  encamped  the  first  night 
in  tents  prepared  for  us  at  Manassas,  with  my 
kinsman,  Captain  Sterrell,  who  was  in  charge  of  the 


178  PEN  AND  INK. 

fortifications  there.  We  were  serenaded  by  the 
famous  Washington  Artillery  of  New  Orleans, 
aided  by  all  the  fine  voices  within  reach.  Captain 
Sterrell  expressed  our  thanks,  and  asked  if  there 
were  any  service  we  might  render  in  return. 
'Let  us  hear  a  woman's  voice/  was  the  cry  which 
arose  in  response.  And,  standing  in  the  tent- 
door,  under  cover  of  the  darkness,  my  sister  sang 
'My  Maryland!'  This,  I  believe,  was  the  birth  of 
the  song  in  the  army.  The  refrain  was  speedily 
caught  up  and  tossed  back  to  us  from  hundreds 
of  rebel  throats.  As  the  last  notes  died  away  there 
surged  forth  from  the  gathering  throng  a  wild 
shout — '  We  will  break  her  chains  !  She  shall  be 
be  free!  She  shaft  be  free!  Three  cheers  and  a 
tiger  for  Maryland  ! '  And  they  were  given  with 
a  will.  There  was  not  a  dry  eye  in  the  tent,  and, 
we  were  told  the  next  day,  not  a  cap  with  a  rim  on 
it  in  camp.  Nothing  could  have  kept  Mr.  Randall's 
verses  from  living  and  growing  into  a  power.  To 
us  fell  the  happy  chance  of  first  giving  them  voice. 
In  a  few  weeks  '  My  Maryland  ! '  had  found  its  way 
to  the  hearts  of  our  whole  people,  and  become  a 
great  national  song." 

I  wish  I  could  call  as  charming  and  as  striking  a 
witness  to  set  forth  the  origin  of  'John  Brown's 
Body.'  The  genesis  of  both  words  and  music  is 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


179 


obscure  and  involved.  The  raw  facts  of  historical 
criticism — names,  places,  dates — are  deficient. 
The  martial  hymn  has  been  called  a  spontaneous 
generation  of  the  uprising  of  the  North  —  a  self- 
made  song,  which  sang  itself  into  being  of  its  own 
accord.  Some  have  treated  it  as  a  sudden  evolu 
tion  from  the  inner  consciousness  of  the  early 
soldiers  all  aglow  with  free-soil  enthusiasm ;  and 
these  speak  of  it  as  springing,  like  Minerva  from 
the  head  of  Jove,  full  armed  and  mature.  Others 
have  more  happily  likened  it  to  Topsy,  in  that  it 
never  was  born,  it  growed  ;  and  this  latter  theory 
has  the  support  of  the  facts  as  far  as  they  can  be 
disentangled  from  a  maze  of  fiction  and  legend. 
A  tentative  and  conjectural  reconstruction  of  the 
story  of  the  song  is  all  I  dare  venture  upon  ;  and  I 
stand  corrected  in  anticipation. 

The  Latter-day  Saints  of  1843  nad  a  camp- 
meeting  song  referring  to  the  Second  Advent, 
'  Say,  brothers,  will  you  meet  us  ? '  Whence  this 
tune  came,  and  whether  or  not  it  is  a  native  negro 
air,  I  have  been  wholly  unable  to  discover.  I  can 
be  certain  only  of  its  later  popularity.  Within 
fifteen  years  it  spread  over  the  country.  Mr.  C. 
G.  Leland  says  that  the  song  "was  a  great  favorite 
with  John  Brown  "  and  that  "it  was  sung  with  an 
improvised  variation  adapted  to  John  Brown  him- 


180  PEN  AND  INK. 

self  by  those  who  were  in  his  funeral  as  it  passed 
through  the  streets  of  New-York." 

John  Brown  was  hanged  in  December,  1859. 
A  little  more  than  a  year  later  the  report  of  the 
shot  against  the  flag  at  Sumter  rang  through  all 
the  States  and  startled  the  blood  of  every  man  in 
the  nation.  Then  suddenly  the  new  song  of 
'  John  Brown's  Body '  sprang  into  being.  It  was 
the  song  of  the  hour.  There  was  a  special  taunt 
to  the  South  in  the  use  of  the  name  of  the  martyr 
of  abolition,  while  to  the  North  that  name  was  as 
a  slogan.  As  the  poet  —  a  prophet  again,  for 
once — had  written  when  John  Brown  was  yet 
alive,  though  condemned  to  death: 

But,  Virginians,  don't  do  it !   for  I  tell  you  that  the  flagon, 
Filled  with  blood  of  old  Brown's  offspring,  was  first  poured 

by  Southern  hands ; 
And  each  drop  from  old  Brown's  life-veins,  like  the  red  gore 

of  the  dragon, 

May  spring  up  a  vengeful  fury,  hissing  through  your  slave- 
worn  lands! 

And  old  Brown, 
Osawatomie  Brown, 

May  trouble  you  more  than  ever,  when  you've  nailed  his 
coffin  down  ! 

The  putting  together  of  the  rude  version  first 
sung  in  the  rising  heat  of  the  war  fever,  the  fitting 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  181 

of  plain  rough  words  to  the  tune  of '  Say,  brothers, 
will  you  meet  us?' — the  tune  of  which  was 
made  more  marked,  and  modified  to  a  march  — 
seems  to  have  been  done  by  a  little  knot  of  men 
in  the  second  battalion,  the  Tigers,  a  Massachu 
setts  command  quartered  at  Fort  Warren,  in  Bos 
ton  Harbor,  in  April,  1861,  just  at  the  time  when 
'  My  Maryland '  was  getting  itself  sung  at  the 
South.  A  writer  in  the  Boston  Herald  says  that 
"the  manner  in  which  'the  old  tune'  was  taken 
to  Fort  Warren  was  simple.  Two  members  of 
the  Tigers  were  present  at  a  camp-meeting  service 
in  a  small  town  in  New  Hampshire  during  the  fall 
preceding  the  occupancy  of  the  fort,"  and  they 
learned  the  air  there.  Their  names  were  Purring- 
ton  and  Brown  ;  and  when  the  Tigers  went  to 
the  fort  and  joined  the  1 2th  regiment,  these  two 
vocalists  took  unto  themselves  two  more,  Edgerly 
and  Greenleaf — the  latter  a  professional  musician. 
By  this  quartet  the  rudimentary  John  Brown  song 
seems  to  have  been  evolved  out  of  the  old  camp- 
meeting  lyric.  Beyond  all  question  it  was  the 
Webster  regiment  which  first  adopted  'John 
Brown's  Body '  as  a  marching  song.  The  soldiers 
of  this  regiment  sang  it  as  they  marched  down 
Broadway,  in  New- York,  July  24,  1861,  on  their 
way  from  Boston  to  the  front.  They  sang  it 


lS2  PEN  AND  INK. 

incessantly  until  August,  1862,  when  Colonel 
Webster  died,  and  when  the  tune  had  been  taken 
up  by  the  nation  at  large  and  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  of  soldiers  were  marching  forward  to  the 
fight  with  the  name  of  John  Brown  on  their  lips. 

There  was  a  majestic  simplicity  in  the  rhythm 
like  the  beating  of  mighty  hammers.  In  the  begin 
ning  the  words  were  bare  to  the  verge  of  barren 
ness.  There  was  no  lack  of  poets  to  fill  them  out. 
Henry  Howard  Brownell,  the  singer  of  the  'Bay 
Fight '  and  the  '  River  Fight,'  skilfully  utilized  the  ac 
cepted  lines,  which  he  enriched  with  a  deeper  mean 
ing.  Then  Mrs.  Howe  wrote  her  'Battle  Hymn  of 
the  Republic/  perhaps  the  most  resonant  and  ele 
vated  of  the  poems  of  American  patriotism.  Its 
religious  fervor  was  in  consonance  with  the  camp- 
meeting  origin  of  the  song,  and  even  more  fully 
with  the  intense  feeling  of  the  time.  Of  late  the 
air  has  been  taken  again  by  Mr.  William  Morris, 
poet  and  socialist,  decorator  and  reformer,  as  the 
one  to  which  shall  be  sung  his  eloquent  and  stir 
ring  'March  of  the  Workers/ 

Curiously  enough,  the  history  of  'Dixie'  is  not 
at  all  unlike  the  history  of  'John  Brown's  Body/ 
'Dixie'  was  composed  in  1859,  by  Mr.  Dan  D. 
Emmett,  as  a  "walk-around"  for  Bryant's  min 
strels,  then  performing  at  Mechanics'  Hall  in  New- 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  183 

York.  Mr.  Emmett  had  travelled  with  circuses, 
and  had  heard  the  performers  refer  to  the  States 
south  of  Mason  and  Dixon'slineas  "Dixie's  land," 
wishing  themselves  there  as  soon  as  the  Northern 
climate  began  to  be  too  severe  for  those  who  live 
in  tents  like  the  Arabs.  It  was  on  this  expression 
of  Northern  circus  performers, 

I  wish  I  was  in  Dixie, 

that  Mr.  Emmett  constructed  his  song.  The 
"walk-around  "  hit  the  taste  of  the  New-York  play- 
going  public,  and  it  was  adopted  at  once  by  various 
bands  of  wandering  minstrels,  who  sang  and  danced 
it  in  all  parts  of  the  Union.  In  the  fall  of  1860 
Mrs.  John  Wood  sang  it  in  New  Orleans  in  John 
Brougham's  burlesque  of  '  Pocahontas/  and  in 
New  Orleans  it  took  root.  Without  any  authority 
from  the  composer,  a  New  Orleans  publisher  had 
the  air  harmonized  and  arranged,  and  he  issued  it 
with  words  embodying  the  strong  Southern  feel 
ing  of  the  chief  city  of  Louisiana.  As  from  Boston 
'John  Brown's  Body'  spread  through  the  North, 
so  from  New  Orleans  'Dixie'  spread  through  the 
South ;  and  as  Northern  poets  strove  to  find  fit 
words  for  the  one,  so  Southern  poets  wrote  fiery 
lines  to  fill  the  measures  of  the  other.  Of  the  sets 
of  verse  written  to  'Dixie/  the  best,  perhaps,  is 


1 84  PEN  AND  INK. 

that  by  General  Albert  Pike,  of  Arkansas,  who 
happens,  by  a  fortuitous  chance,  to  have  been 
a  native  of  Vermont.  With  Republican  words 
'Dixie*  had  been  used  as  a  campaign  song  in 
1860;  and  it  was  perhaps  some  vague  remem 
brance  of  this  which  prompted  Lincoln  to  have  the 
air  played  by  a  band  in  Washington  in  1865,  a 
short  time  after  the  surrender  at  Appomattox, 
remarking  that  as  we  had  captured  the  rebel  army 
we  had  captured  also  the  rebel  tune. 

From  New  Orleans  also  came  another  of  the 
songs  of  the  South,  the  '  Bonnie  Blue  Flag/  Mr. 
Randall  writes  me  that  'Dixie'  and  the  'Bonnie 
Blue  Flag '  were  the  most  popular  of  Southern 
songs.  Like  '  Dixie,'  the  '  Bonnie  Blue  Flag'  came 
from  the  theatre.  The  tune  is  an  old  Hibernian 
melody,  the  'Irish  Jaunting  Car.'  The  earliest 
words  were  written  by  an  Irish  comedian,  Harry 
McCarthy,  and  the  song  was  first  sung  by  his 
sister,  Miss  Marion  McCarthy,  at  the  Varieties 
Theatre,  in  1861.  It  was  published  by  Mr.  A.  E. 
Blackmar,  who  wrote  to  a  friend  of  mine  that  Gen 
eral  Butler  "  made  it  very  profitable  by  fining  every 
man,  woman,  or  child  who  sang,  whistled,  or 
played  it  on  any  instrument,  $25,"  besides  arrest 
ing  the  publisher,  destroying  the  sheet  music,  and 
fining  him  $500.  Later  a  stirring  lyric,  to  be  sung 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  185 

to  this  air,  was  written  by  Miss  Annie  Chambers 
Ketcham. 

In  Louisiana,  of  course,  there  was  also  the  'Mar 
seillaise/  "The  Creoles  of  New  Orleans,"  Mr. 
Cable  has  written  me,  "followed  close  by  the  An 
glo-Americans  of  their  town,  took  up  the  'Mar 
seillaise'  with  great  enthusiasm,  as  they  have 
always  done  whenever  a  war  spirit  was  up.  They 
did  it  when  the  British  invaded  Louisiana  in  1814. 
It  was  good  enough  as  it  stood ;  they  made  no  new 
adaptations  of  it,  but  sang  it  in  French  and  English 
(I  speak  of  1861),  'dry  so,'  as  the  Southern  rustics 
say.  '  Dixie'  started  with  the  first  mutter  of  war 
thunder.  ...  I  think  the  same  is  true  of 
'Lorena.'  This  doleful  old  ditty  started  at  the 
start,  and  never  stopped  till  the  last  musket  was 
stacked  and  the  last  camp-fire  cold.  It  was,  by  all 
odds,  the  song  nearest  the  Confederate  soldier's 
heart.  It  was  the  'Annie  Laurie'  of  the  Confed 
erate  trenches." 

Nowadays  it  is  not  a  little  difficult  to  detect  in 
the  rather  mushy  sentimentality  of  the  words 
of  'Lorena,'  or  in  the  lugubrious  wail  of  its  music, 
any  qualities  which  might  account  for  the  affection 
it  was  held  in.  But  the  vagaries  of  popular  taste  are 
inscrutable.  Dr.  Palmer's  vigorous  lyric,  '  Stone 
wall  Jackson's  Way,'  written  within  sound  of  the 


1 86  PEN  AND  INK. 

cannonading  at  Antietam,  was  so  little  sung  that 
Mr.  Randall  thought  it  had  not  been  set  to  music. 
I  have,  however,  succeeded  in  discovering  two  airs 
to  which  it  was  sung — one  published  by  Mr.  Black- 
mar,  and  the  other  the  familiar  '  Duda,  duda,  day.' 
The  Northern  equivalent  of  'Lorena'  is  to  be 
sought  among  the  songs  which  made  a  lyric  address 
to  'Mother,'  and  of  which  'Just  before  the  Battle, 
Mother,'  may  be  taken  as  a  type.  'Mother,  I've 
Come  Home  to  Die'  was  sung  with  feeling  and 
with  humor  by  many  a  gallant  fellow  who  is  now 
gathered  at  the  bivouac  of  the  dead.  Mr.  George 
F.  Root,  of  Chicago,  was  both  the  author  and  com 
poser  of  'Just  before  the  Battle,  Mother,'  as  he  was 
also  of  the '  Battle  Cry  of  Freedom,'  and  of  '  Tramp, 
Tramp,  Tramp ;  the  Boys  are  Marching.'  It  is 
difficult  to  say  which  one  of  these  three  songs  was 
the  most  popular;  there  was  a  touch  of  realistic 
pathos  in  'Just  before  the  Battle,  Mother,'  which 
brought  the  simple  and  unpretending  words  home 
to  the  hearts  of  the  men  who  had  girded  on  the 
sword  and  shouldered  the  musket.  Yet  captivity 
was  not  seldom  more  bitter  to  bear  than  death  it 
self,  and  this  gave  point  to  the  lament  of  the  soldier 
who  sat  in  his  "prison  cell"  and  heard  the  tramp, 
tramp,  tramp  of  the  marching  boys.  Probably, 
however,  the  first  favorite  with  the  soldiers  in  the 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  187 

field,  and  certainly  the  song  of  Mr.  Root's  which 
has  the  best  chance  of  surviving,  is  the  '  Battle  Cry 
of  Freedom.'  It  was  often  ordered  to  be  sung  as 
the  men  marched  into  action.  More  than  once  its 
strains  arose  on  the  battle-field  and  made  obedience 
more  easy  to  the  lyric  command  to  rally  round  the 
flag.  With  the  pleasant  humor  which  never  deserts 
the  American,  even  in  the  hard  tussle  of  war,  the 
gentle  lines  of  'Mary  had  a  Little  Lamb'  were  fitted 
snugly  to  the  tune ;  and  many  a  regiment  short 
ened  a  weary  march  or  went  gayly  into  action, 
singing, 

Mary  had  a  little  lamb, 

Its  fleece  was  white  as  snow, 
Shouting  the  battle-cry  of  freedom ; 

And  everywhere  that  Mary  went 

The  lamb  was  sure  to  go, 
Shouting  the  battle-cry  of  freedom. 

Now  the  song  is  sure  of  immortality,  for  it  has 
become  a  part  of  those  elective  studies  which  are 
the  chief  gains  of  the  college  curriculum.  At  the 
hands  of  the  American  college  boys,  '  Rally  round 
the  Flag'  can  get  a  renewed  lease  of  life  for 
twenty-one  years  more — or  forever.  A  boy  is 
your  true  conservative ;  he  is  the  genuine  guardian 
of  ancient  rites  and  customs,  old  rhymes  and 
songs ;  he  has  the  fullest  reverence  for  age — if  so 
be  it  is  not  incarnated  in  a  Prof,  or  the  Prex. 


1 88  PEN  AND  INK. 

Lowell,  in  declaring  the  antiquity  of  the  New  World, 
says  that  "  we  have  also  in  America  things  amaz 
ingly  old,  as  our  boys,  for  example."  And  the 
borrowing  of  the  '  Battle  Cry  of  Freedom  '  by  the 
colleges  is  only  the  fair  exchange  which  is  no  rob 
bery;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  from  the  col 
lege  that  the  air  of  '  Lauriger  Horatius '  was  taken 
to  speed  the  heated  stanzas  of  '  My  Maryland.' 
Another  college  song, — if  the  digression  may  be 
pardoned, — the  '  Upidee-LJpida,'  to  which  we  so 
wickedly  sing  the  quatrains  of  Longfellow's  '  Ex 
celsior,'  I  have  heard  rising  sonorously  from  the 
throats  of  a  stalwart  regiment  of  German  Landwehr 
in  the  summer  of  1870,  as  they  were  on  their  way 
to  the  French  frontier  —  and  to  Paris. 

Although  they  came  at  the  beginning  of  the 
war,  'John  Brown's  Body'  and  the  '  Battle  Cry  of 
Freedom '  have  been  sung  scarcely  more  often 
than  'Marching  through  Georgia/  which  could  not 
have  come  into  being  until  near  the  end  of  the  fight. 
Now  that  the  war  has  been  over  for  twenty  years 
and  more,  and  the  veteran  has  no  military  duty 
more  harassing  than  fighting  his  battles  o'er, 
'  Marching  through  Georgia  '  has  become  the  song 
dearest  to  his  heart.  The  swinging  rhythm  of  the 
tune  and  the  homely  directness  of  the  words  gave 
the  song  an  instant  popularity,  increased  by  the 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  189 

fact  that  it  commemorated  the  most  striking  epi 
sode  of  the  war,  the  march  to  the  sea.  '  Marching 
through  Georgia'  was  written  and  composed  by 
the  late  Henry  C.  Work.  In  his  history  of  'Music 
in  America/  Professor  Ritter  refers  to  Stephen  C. 
Foster,  the  composer  of  'Old  Folks  at  Home, 'as  one 
who  "  said  naively  and  gently  what  he  had  to  say, 
without  false  pretension  or  bombastic  phrases"; 
and  this  praise  may  be  applied  also  to  Work,  who 
had  not  a  little  of  the  folk-flavor  which  gives  quality 
to  Foster.  Like  Foster,  Work  was  fond  of  reflect 
ing  the  rude  negro  rhythms ;  and  some  of  his  best 
songs  seem  like  actual  echoes  from  the  cotton- 
field  and  levee.  'Wake,  Nicodemus,'  'Kingdom 
Coming/  and  '  Babylon  is  Fallen '  have  this  savor 
of  the  soil, —  sophisticated,  it  may  be,  and  yet  pun 
gent  and  captivating.  I  have  heard  it  suggested 
that  '  Marching  through  Georgia '  was  founded 
on  a  negro  air,  and  also  that  it  is  a  reminiscence 
of  a  bit  of  the  '  Rataplan  '  of  the  '  Huguenots/  It 
is  possible  that  there  is  a  little  truth  at  the  bottom 
of  both  of  these  stories.  The  '  Huguenots '  was 
frequently  performed  at  the  New  Orleans  Opera 
House  before  the  war,  and  many  a  slave  must 
have  heard  his  young  mistress  singing  and  playing 
selections  from  Meyerbeer's  music ;  and  it  may  be 
that  Work,  in  turn,  overheard  some  negro's  ram- 


190  PEN  AND  INK. 

bling  recollection  of  the  '  Rataplan.'  This  is  idle 
conjecture,  however ;  the  tune  of  '  Marching 
through  Georgia '  is  fresh  and  spirited  ;  and  it  bids 
fair — with  'John  Brown's  Body' — to  be  the  chief 
legacy  of  the  war.  Work  was  also  the  author 
and  composer  of  two  other  songs  which  had  their 
day,  '  Drafted  into  the  Army '  and  '  Brave  Boys  are 
They.'  The  latter  has  had  the  honor  of  being 
sung  of  late  by  Mr.  Cable,  who  heard  first  at  a 
Southern  camp-fire  from  the  lips  of  a  comrade  the 
chorus  of  Northern  origin,  equally  apt  in  its  appli 
cation  in  those  troublous  times  to  the  homes  on 
either  side  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line : 

Brave  boys  are  they, 

Gone  at  their  country's  call ; 
And  yet —  and  yet  we  cannot  forget 

That  many  brave  boys  must  fall. 

It  was  in  the  dark  days  of  1862,  just  after  Lin 
coln  had  issued  the  proclamation  asking  for  three 
hundred  thousand  volunteers  to  fill  up  the  stricken 
ranks  of  the  army  and  to  carry  out  the  cry  which 
urged  it '  On  to  Richmond,'  that  Mr.  John  S.  Gib 
bons  wrote 

We  are  coming,  Father  Abraham, 
Three  hundred  thousand  more, 

a  lyric  which  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  bring- 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR.  191 

ing  about  of  the  uprising  it  declared.  The  author 
of  this  ringing  call  to  arms  was  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  Friends, — in  other  words,  a  Hicksite 
Quaker, — "  with  a  reasonable  leaning,  however, 
toward  wrath  in  cases  of  emergency,"  as  his  son- 
in-law,  Mr.  James  H.  Morse,  neatly  put  it,  in  a 
recent  letter  to  me.  He  joined  the  abolition 
movement  in  1830,  when  he  was  barely  twenty 
years  old.  Three  years  later  he  married  a  daugh 
ter  of  Isaac  T.  Hopper,  the  Quaker  philanthropist. 
For  a  short  time  he  was  one  of  the  editors  of  the 
Anti-Slavery  Standard,  and  like  many  of  the 
Quakers  of  his  school,  he  was  always  ardent  in 
the  cause  of  negro  freedom.  At  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  Mrs.  Gibbons  and  her  eldest  daughter 
went  to  the  front,  and  they  served  in  the  hospitals 
until  the  end.  While  they  were  away  the  riots 
of  '63  occurred,  and  their  house  in  New- York  was 
sacked,  Mr.  Gibbons  and  the  two  younger  daugh 
ters  taking  refuge  with  relatives  in  the  house  next 
door  but  one,  and  thence  over  the  roofs  to  Eighth 
Avenue,  where  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate  had  a  car 
riage  in  waiting  for  them.  The  house  was  sin 
gled  out  for  this  attention  because  it  had  been 
illuminated  when  the  Emancipation  Proclamation 
was  issued, —  on  which  occasion  it  had  been 
daubed  and  defiled  with  coal  tar. 


192  PEN  AND  INK. 

At  the  request  of  Mr.  Morse,  Mr.  Gibbons  has 
put  on  paper  an  account  of  the  circumstances 
under  which  he  wrote  '  We  are  coming,  Father 
Abraham/  and  from  this  I  am  privileged  to 
quote.  It  must  be  premised  that  Mr.  Gibbons, 
although  he  had  written  verse, — as  who  has 
not? — was  best  known  as  a  writer  on  economic 
topics :  he  has  published  two  books  about  bank 
ing  and  he  was  for  a  while  the  financial  editor  of 
the  Evening  Post.  In  1862,  after  Lincoln  had 
issued  his  call  for  volunteers,  Mr.  Gibbons  used  to 
take  long  walks  alone,  often  talking  to  himself. 
"  I  began  to  con  over  a  song,"  he  writes.  "  The 
words  seemed  to  fall  into  ranks  and  files,  and  to 
come  with  a  measured  step.  Directly  would 
come  along  a  company  of  soldiers  with  fife  and 
drum,  and  that  helped  the  matter  amazingly.  I 
began  to  keep  step  myself — three  hun-dred  thou 
sand  more.  It  was  very  natural  to  answer  the 
President's  call — we  are  coming — and  to  prefix 
the  term  father.  Then  the  line  would  follow. 

We  are  coming,  Father  Abraham, 

and  nothing  was  more  natural  than  the  number 
of  soldiers  wanted. 

Three  hundred  thousand  more. 

We  are  coming,  Father  Abraham,  three  hundred  thousand 
more. 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


'93 


"  Where  from?  Shore  is  the  rhyme  wanted." 
Just  then  Mr.  Gibbons  met  "a  western  regi 
ment — from  Minnesota,  it  was — and  the  line 
came  at  once  in  full, 

From  Mississippi's  winding  stream,  and  from  New  Eng 
land's  shore. 

"  Two  lines  in  full  .  .  .  Then  followed — how 
naturally ! 

We  leave  our  ploughs  and  workshops,  our  wives  and  children 

dear, 
With  hearts  too  full  for  utterance,  with  but  a  silent  tear. 

"  And  so  it  went  on,  word  by  word,  line  by 
line,  until  the  whole  song  was  made."  When  it 
was  written,  only  one  slight  verbal  alteration  was 
made,  and  then  it  was  printed  in  the  Evening  Post 
of  July  1 6,  1862.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  it 
was  in  the  Evening  Post  of  May  29,  1819,  nearly 
half  a  century  before,  that  another  famous  patriotic 
poem  had  first  been  published — Drake's  '  Ameri 
can  Flag.'  Mr.  Gibbons's  song  appeared  anony 
mously  and  its  authorship  was  ascribed  at  once  to 
Bryant,  who  was  then  the  editor  of  the  Evening 
Post.  At  a  large  meeting  in  Boston,  held  the 
evening  after  it  had  appeared,  it  was  read  byjosiah 
Quincy  as  "  the  latest  poem  written  by  Mr.  Wm. 
C.  Bryant." 


194  PEN  AND  INK. 

One  of  the  Hutchinson  family  set  it  to  music, 
and  they  sang  it  with  great  effect.  A  common 
friend  told  Jesse  Hutchinson  that  the  song  was 
not  by  Bryant  but  by  Mr.  Gibbons.  "What — our 
old  friend  Gibbons  ?  "  he  asked  in  reply.  It  is  re 
ported  that  when  he  was  assured  that  his  old 
friend  Gibbons  was  the  real  author  of  the  song, 
Jesse  Hutchinson  hesitated  thoughtfully  for  a  mo 
ment  and  then  said,  "Well,  we'll  keep  the  name 
of  Bryant,  as  we've  got  it.  He's  better  known 
than  Gibbons."  The  stirring  song  was  set  to 
music  by  several  other  composers,  most  of  whom 
probably  supposed  that  it  was  Bryant's.  I  find  in 
a  stray  newspaper  cutting  an  account  of  Lincoln's 
coming  down  to  the  Red  Room  of  the  White 
House  one  morning  in  the  summer  of  1864,  to 
listen  with  bowed  head  and  patient,  pensive  eyes 
while  one  of  a  party  of  visitors  sang 

We  are  coming,  Father   Abraham,  three  hundred  thousand 
more. 

A  rattling  good  war  song  which  has  kept  its 
hold  on  the  ears  of  the  people  is  '  When  Johnny 
comes  Marching  Home,'  published  in  1863  by 
"Louis  Lambert."  Behind  this  pseudonym  was 
hidden  Mr.  P.  S.  Gilmore,  the  projector  of  the 
Boston  "Peace  Jubilee,"  and  the  composer  after- 


THE  SONGS  OF  THE  CIVIL  WAR. 


195 


ward  of  a  more  ambitious  national  hymn,  which 
has  hitherto  failed  to  attain  the  popularity  of  its 
unpretending  predecessor  with  the  rousing  refrain. 
It  is  related  that  after  the  performance  of  '  Glory  to 
God  on  High,'  from  Mozart's  Twelfth  Mass,  on 
the  first  day  of  the  Jubilee,  an  old  soldier  of  the 
Webster  regiment  took  occasion  to  shake  hands 
with  Mr.  Gilmore  and  to  proffer  his  congratula 
tions  on  the  success  of  the  undertaking,  adding 
that  for  his  part  what  he  had  liked  best  was  the 
piece  called  the  '  Twelfth  Massachusetts/ 

At  the  Boston  Peace  Jubilee,  and  again  at  the 
Centennial  Exhibition,  there  was  opportunity  for 
the  adequate  and  serious  treatment  of  the  war 
tunes  which  have  survived  the  welter  and  turmoil 
of  the  actual  struggle  ;  but  the  occasion  was  not  im 
proved.  Little  more  has  been  done  than  a  chance 
arrangement  of  airs  in  the  clap-trap  manner  of 
Jull'en's  '  British  Army  Quadrilles/  The  '  Cen 
tennial  March '  which  Richard  Wagner  wrote  for 
us  was  the  work  of  a  master,  no  doubt,  but  it  was 
perfunctory,  and  hopelessly  inferior  to  his  resplen 
dent  'Kaiser  March/  The  German  composer  had 
not  touch  of  the  American  people,  and  as  he  did  not 
know  what  was  in  our  hearts,  we  had  no  right  to 
hope  that  he  should  give  it  expression.  The  time 
is  now  ripe  for  the  musician  who  shall  richly  and 


196  PEN  AND  INK. 

amply  develop  with  sustained  and  sonorous  dig 
nity  the  few  simple  airs  which  represent  and 
recall  to  the  people  of  these  United  States  the 
emotions,  the  doubts,  the  dangers,  the  joys,  the 
sorrows,  the  harassing  anxieties,  and  the  final 
triumph  of  the  four  long  years  of  bitter  strife.  The 
composer  who  will  take  'John  Brown's  Body' 
and  '  Marching  through  Georgia,'  and  such  other 
of  our  war  tunes  as  may  be  found  worthy,  and 
who  shall  do  unto  them  as  the  still  living  Hunga 
rian  and  Scandinavian  composers  have  done  to 
the  folk-songs  of  their  native  land,  need  not  hesi 
tate  from  poverty  of  material  or  from  fear  of  the 
lack  of  a  responsive  audience.  The  first  American 
composer  who  shall  turn  these  war  tunes  into 
mighty  music  to  commemorate  the  events  which 
called  them  forth,  will  of  a  certainty  have  his  re 
ward. 

(1887) 


VIII 

ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN  BY 
THOSE  WHO  DO  NOT 
SPEAK  FRENCH 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN  BY  THOSE  WHO 
DO  NOT  SPEAK  FRENCH. 


HAVE  always  thought  it  a  great  pity 
that  Thackeray  did  not  leave  us  a 
Roundabout  Paper  '  On  the  French 
spoken  by  those  who  do  not  speak 
French/  No  one  is  so  competent  and 
so  capable  of  doing  justice  to  the  topic  as  Thack 
eray.  It  is  a  subject  which  seems  most  suitable 
for  the  author  of  the  '  Book  of  Snobs  ' ;  for,  above 
all  things,  is  there  snobbishness  in  the  affectation 
of  being  on  speaking  terms  with  the  French  lan 
guage,  when  in  very  truth  it  barely  returns  your 
bow.  The  title  of  the  proposed  paper  is  perhaps 
a  little  long ;  but  there  is  wealth  enough  of  ma 
terial  to  warrant  an  article  as  ample  as  the  name 
may  promise.  Indeed,  the  title  is  almost  too  com 
prehensive,  for  it  includes  the  blunders  of  those 
who  know  they  cannot  speak  French,  but  never 
theless  try  to  make  themselves  understood,  and 
the  errors  of  those  who  insist  in  thinking  that  they 


199 


200  PEN  AND  INK. 

can  speak  French  in  spite  of  oral  testimony  which 
convinces  every  one  else.  And  it  would  also  in 
clude  certain  extraordinary  phrases  which  pass  for 
French  in  ordinary  English  speech. 

The  first  of  these  classes  is  the  French  of  Strat- 
ford-at-Bow,  the  French  of  the  Hoosier  or  the 
Cockney,  the  French  of  those  who  affectionately 
refer  to  the  capital  of  France  as  "Parry" — as 
though  it  were  an  Arctic  explorer ;  there  are  even 
those,  I  am  told,  who  descend  so  low  as  "  Parree," 
because,  mayhap,  like  Mrs.  General  Gil/lory, 
they  "  have  been  so  long  abroad."  At  this  type 
the  French  themselves  never  tire  of  poking  fun.  In 
caricature,  pictorial  or  dramatic,  it  is  an  endless 
source  of  amusement;  and  the  seeker  for  illustra 
tive  anecdote  has  an  abundance  to  choose  from. 
One  of  the  most  amusing  is  a  dialogue  between  a 
Cockney  passenger,  who  has  full  belief  in  the  purity 
of  his  French,  and  the  conductor  of  a  diligence. 
The  Cockney  begins  by  calling  the  coachman  a 
pig  —  and,  indeed,  cocher  is  not  so  very  unlike 
cochon.  Then  he  addresses  himself  to  the  con 
ductor  : 

"  Etes-vous  le  diligence  ?  " 

"  Non,  m'sieur,  je  suis  le  conducteur." 

"  C'est  tout  le  meme  chose.  Donnez-moa  doux 
places  dans  votre  interieur." 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN.  2OI 

Unable  to  get  inside  seats,  he  tries  to  mount  to 
the  roof.  Unfortunately,  he  slips  and  falls  heavily 
to  the  ground.  The  conductor  runs  to  his  assist 
ance. 

"  A,vez-vous  de  mal,  m'sieur?" 

"No,  moa  pas  de  malle,  moa  only  a  portman 
teau." 

Here  the  blunderer  was  English  ;  but  in  another 
narrative  it  seems  to  me  that  the  fault  lies  rather 
with  the  Frenchman.  An  Anglo-Saxon  was  trav 
elling  in  the  south  of  France,  and  once,  as  the  train 
into  the  station  drew,  he  asked  an  attendant : 

"  Est-ce  que  c'est  ici  Hyeres  ?  " 

Unfortunately,  he  pronounced  the  name  of 
the  town  as  though  it  were  written  Her ;  and  so 
he  received  the  puzzled  answer : 

"  Mais  non,  m'sieur,  c'est  ici  aujourd'hui." 

Of  honest  blundering  in  the  use  of  the  foreign 
tongue,  and  of  frank  ignorance,  there  is  no  lack  of 
anecdotes.  The  young  lady  brought  up  in  an 
establishment  where  "French  is  the  language  of 
the  school  "  is  not  always  above  asking  "qu'elle 
est  la  matiere  ?  "  and  telling  you  that  "  il  n'y  a  pas 
de  depeche,"  when  she  means  to  inquire  what 
may  be  the  matter,  and  to  inform  you  that  there  is 
no  hurry.  I  believe  that  Americans  pick  up  French 
more  quickly  than  do  the  English;  but  when 


202  PEN  AND  INK. 

one  seeks  for  typical  blunders  of  beginners  and  of 
pretenders,  honors  are  easy.  It  was  a  young  Amer 
ican  who  asked  for  "cafe  au  lait  without  any 
milk,"  and  who  alluded  to  "  gendre  pictures,"  and 
who  described  a  dress  as  "  trimmed  all  down  the 
front  with  bouillon  fringe."  But  internal  evidence 
compels  me  to  assign  to  an  Englishman  the  part 
of  the  protagonist  in  two  merry  jests  of  this  sort. 
In  one  he  says,  "  Je  veux  un  poitrine  de  canons," 
and  it  is  discovered  that  he  had  dug  out  from  the 
dictionary  this  translation  of  "  chest  of  drawers.  ' 
In  the  other  the  scene  is  laid  on  a  channel  steamer, 
and  as  this  thrusts  its  nose  into  the  chopping  sea, 
an  English  bagman  calls  frantically  for  the  steward, 
adding,  "Jesens  mauvais.  Quest  ma  naissance?" 
I  have  been  told  that  he  supposed  he  was  saying 
the  French  equivalent  for  "  I  feel  bad.  Where  is 
my  berth  ?  " 

An  American  again,  and  a  rigid  Republican,  is 
the  hero  of  another  anecdote.  He  met  the  Ger 
man  king  who  has  won  fame  in  the  study  of 
Dante,  and  he  told  his  majesty  that  he  was  pleased 
to  meet  him.  He  parted  from  the  royal  scholar 
with  the  remark,  "Je  vous  honore  pas  comme  roi 
mais  comme  ecolier !  "  It  is  a  strange  sight  to  see 
two  Anglo-Saxon  strangers  meet  and  "terrify  each 
other  into  mutual  unintelligibility  with  that  lingua 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN. 


203 


franca  of  the  English-speaking  traveller,  which  is 
supposed  to  bear  some  remote  affinity  to  the  French 
language,  of  which  both  parties  are  as  ignorant  as 
an  American  ambassador  " — as  Mr.  Lowell  wrote 
in  his  'Fireside  Travels,'  not  foreseeing  the  time 
when  the  scholar  in  politics  should  be  minister  at 
Madrid  and  London. 

When  Dr.  Holmes  acted  as  a  medium  and  mate 
rialized  the  sturdy  spectre  of  Dr.  Johnson,  the  ear 
lier  autocrat  declared  to  the  later  that  ' '  to  trifle 
with  the  vocabulary,  which  is  the  vehicle  of  social 
intercourse,  is  to  tamper  with  the  currency  of 
human  intelligence  "  ;  and  the  orotund  presence 
added  the  characteristic  sentiment  that  in  his 
opinion  "  he  who  would  violate  the  sanctities  of 
his  mother-tongue  would  invade  the  recesses  of 
the  paternal  till  without  remorse,  and  repeat  the 
banquet  of  Saturn  without  indigestion."  From 
the  context  we  learn  that  just  then  the  spirit  of  the 
great  lexicographer  had  been  perturbed  by  certain 
trifling  puns  or  verbal  witticisms  with  which  the 
breakfast-table  had  been  amused  ;  but  his  ponder 
ous  criticism  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  quite 
as  applicable  to  the  ill-advised  speakers  and  writers 
who  find  the  English  language  inadequate  to  the 
full  expression  of  their  teeming  thoughts,  and  who 
are  therefore  forced  to  filch  phrases  from  foreign 
tongues. 


204  PEN  AND  INK- 

The  habit  of  dropping  into  French,  for  example, 
is  as  enfeebling  as  the  habit  of  punning ;  and  the 
one  is  quite  as  fairly  to  be  considered  a  violation 
of  the  sanctities  of  the  mother-tongue  as  the  other. 
Either  habit  indicates  a  certain  flabbiness  of  fibre, 
intellectual  as  well  as  ethical.  It  is  difficult  to  be 
lieve  either  in  the  moral  rectitude  or  in  the  mental 
strength  of  a  man  or  of  a  woman  addicted  to  the 
quoting  of  odd  scraps  of  odd  French.  When  we 
take  up  the  latest  work  of  a  young-lady-novelist, 
and  when  we  find  scattered  through  her  pages 
soiibriquet,  and  double-entendre,  and  nom  de  plume, 
and  a  I'outrance,  and  other  words  and  phrases 
which  no  Frenchman  knows,  we  need  not  read 
further  to  be  sure  that  the  mantle  of  Jane  Austen 
and  George  Eliot  has  not  fallen  on  the  shoulders 
of  the  fair  author.  Even  Mrs.  Oliphant,  a  novelist 
who  is  old  enough  to  know  better,  and  who  has 
delighted  us  all  with  her  charming  tales  of  truly 
English  life,  is  wont  to  sprinkle  French  freely 
through  her  many  volumes,  not  in  her  novels 
only,  but  even  in  her  unnecessary  memoir  of  Sher 
idan,  whom  she  credits  with  gaite  du  cceur.  In 
his  '  Letter  to  Young  Contributors/  Colonel  Hig- 
ginson  gave  sound  advice  to  the  literary  tyro  when 
suggesting  that  he  should  "avoid  French  as  some 
of  the  fashionable  novelists  avoid  English." 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN. 


205 


Has  any  one  ever  noted  that  there  is  a  far  greater 
fondness  in  England  for  French  words  and  phrases 
than  there  is  in  America  ?  Whether  I  am  the  dis 
coverer  or  not,  the  fact  seems  to  me  to  be  beyond 
question.  In  the  new  Grand  Hotel  in  London, 
which  is  supposed  to  be  managed  on  the  Ameri 
can  plan,  more  or  less,  but  which  has  a  name  bor 
rowed  from  Paris,  the  very  gorgeous  dining-room 
is  labeled  Satte  a  Manger.  In  another  English 
hotel  I  saw  a  sign  on  what  we  call  the  "  elevator," 
and  the  English,  with  greater  simplicity,  term  a 
"lift,"  declaring  it  to  be  an  ascenseur.  The  port 
able  fire-extinguisher  familiar  to  all  Americans  as  a 
"  Babcock,"  is  in  England  called  an  extinfleur.  On 
the  programmes  of  the  itinerant  opera  company 
managed  by  Mr.  Mapleson,  and  called,  comically 
enough,  Her  Majesty's  Opera,  the  wig-maker  and 
costumer  appear  as  the  perruquier  and  the  cos 
tumier.  In  the  window  of  a  shop  in  Regent 
Street,  toward  the  end  of  the  season,  I  saw  exposed 
for  sale  a  handsome  china  tea-service  in  a  hand 
some  silk-lined  box,  bearing  in  its  cover  two  little 
placards,  that  to  the  right  declaring  that  it  was 
suitable  for  A  Wedding  Present,  while  that  on  the 
left  suggested  its  fitness  as  Un  Present  De  Noces. 
In  another  English  shop  I  have  seen  a  heap  of  nap 
kins  surmounted  by  a  placard  setting  forth  the 


206  PEN  AND  INK. 

price  of  these  serviettes,  and  not  far  off  was  a  pile 
of  oddly  named  serviette-rings.  But  perhaps  this 
is  not  more  painful  than  a  sign  still  to  be  seen  in 
New  Bond  Street,  declaring  that  the  house  to  which 
it  is  affixed  is  occupied  by  "  Blank  et  Cie.,  Artistes 
in  Corsets."  This,  in  the  language  of  the  wild 
Western  humorist  after  he  had  been  to  Paris,  frappe 
tout  chose  parfaitement  froid  ! 

Of  course  it  cannot  be  denied  that  certain  French 
words  (and  not  those  only  which  came  over  with 
the  Conqueror)  have  fairly  won  a  right  of  domicile 
in  England.  Ennui,  for  example,  and  pique — these 
have  no  exact  English  equivalents,  and  their  re 
moval  from  common  speech  would  leave  an  aching 
void.  (To  denouement  I  shall  recur  later.)  But 
why  should  we  speak  of  an  employe  when  the 
regularly  formed  "employee"  is  at  our  service? 
And  what  evil  spirit  possesses  Mrs.  Tompkins,  the 
London  milliner,  and  Miss  Simkins,  the  London 
dressmaker,  to  emblazon  their  golden  signs  with 
the  mystic  "Mdme.  Tompkins,  Modes,"  and 
"  Mdlle.  Simkins,  Robes"?  And  here  occasion 
serves  to  protest,  with  whatever  strength  may  in 
me  lie,  against  the  superfluous  d  which  British  cus 
tom  has  injected  into  the  French  contractions  for 
Madame  and  Mademoiselle.  We  say  British,  for 
this  error  is  confined  to  Great  Britain  and  her  co- 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN. 


207 


lonial  dependencies,  the  inhabitants  of  the  United 
States  of  America  having  happily  escaped  it.  In 
America,  as  in  France,  Madame  and  Mademoiselle 
are  contracted  to  Mme.  and  Mile.,  and  it  is  only 
the  Briton  who  writes  Mdme.  and  Mdtte.,  in  the 
fond  belief  that  he  has  caught  the  exact  Parisian 
touch.  I  venture  to  hint  also  that  even  after  a 
French  word  has  been  admitted  into  the  English 
language,  the  Englishman  is  inclined  to  recall  its 
foreign  origin  in  pronouncing  it,  while  the  Ameri 
can  treats  it  frankly  as  an  English  word.  Thus 
charade  has  nearly  the  same  sound  in  the  mouth 
of  an  educated  Englishman  that  it  has  in  the  mouth 
of  a  Frenchman,  whereas  it  falls  from  the  lips  of 
an  American  as  a  perfect  rhyme  for  "  made."  And 
in  like  manner  trait  retains  its  French  pronuncia 
tion  in  Great  Britain,  while  in  the  United  States  it 
is  spoken  as  it  is  spelt — to  rhyme  with  "  strait." 
The  pun  in  the  title  of  Dr.  Doran's  '  Table  Traits, 
with  something  on  them,'  wholly  evades  an 
American  unfamiliar  with  the  British  usage.  But 
the  American  who  girds  at  this  English  peculiarity 
must  remember  that  he  has  heard  his  fellow-citi 
zens  call  a  menu  a  "  maynew,"  and  a  debut  a 
"  debyou  "  ;  and  that  some  of  them  are  in  doubt 
whether  depot  ought  to  rhyme  happily  with 
"Aleppo,"  or  haply  with  "teapot,"  and  there- 


208  PEN  AND  INK. 

fore  compromise  illogically  by  rhyming  it  with 
"sweep  oh  !  " 

To  the  ignorant  and  affected  misuse  of  French 
or  quasi-French,  there  is  another  kind  of  snob 
bishness  closely  akin  and  deserving  castigation  as 
severe.  It  is  the  use  of  the  native  name  of  a  place, 
or  worse  yet,  of  the  French  name,  instead  of  the 
English.  What  sort  of  figure  would  be  cut  by  a 
returned  traveller  who  described  his  journeys  and 
his  sojournings  in  Italia  and  Deutschland?  Is  it 
not  as  bad  to  speak  of  Mainz?  and  worse  still,  of 
Mayence  ? — when  there  is  an  honest  English  name, 
Mentz,  inscribed  in  a  hundred  lusty  chronicles  of 
illustrious  wars?  And  how  often  do  we  hear 
ladies  talk  of  Malines  lace,  meaning  the  while  the 
lace  made  at  Mechlin, —  for  the  town  is  Dutch, 
although  the  French  have  chosen  to  give  it  a  name 
of  their  own  fashioning,  as  they  have  also  to  Mentz 
and  many  another  city. 

It  may  be  as  well  to  note  that  the  French  phrase 
is  a  entrance,  that  there  is  no  u  in  sobriquet,  and 
that  the  French  know  no  such  expression  as  nom  de 
plume  or  double-entendre,  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  one  being  nom  de  guerre  and  to  the  other  dou 
ble  entente,  a  double  meaning,  which  is,  however, 
wholly  devoid  of  the  ulterior  significance  attached 
to  double-entendre.  Perhaps  the  word  most  sinned 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN.  209 

against  is  artiste.  There  is  really  no  excuse  what 
ever  for  the  use  of  this  word  in  English  speech. 
It  is  the  exact  translation  and  complete  equivalent 
of  the  English  word  artist,  and  it  does  not  mean 
a  female  artist  any  more  than  pianixte  means  a 
female  pianist.  I  can  now  recall  with  a  shudder 
a  programme  thrust  into  my  hand  at  a  watering- 
place  two  or  three  years  ago,  in  which  a  certain 
charming  artist  was  announced  as  "the  greatest 
living  lady  pianiste  in  the  world."  Encore,  although 
used  in  English  in  a  sense  wholly  different  from 
that  which  it  has  in  French,  has  now  taken  out  its 
naturalization  papers ;  and  so  has  a  hybrid  word 
parquette  used  in  America  to  indicate  what  the 
English  call  the  stalls  or  orchestra  chairs. 

But  on  the  stage,  or  rather  in  writings  for  and 
of  and  about  the  stage,  there  is  an  enormous  con 
sumption  of  French  phrases,  or  of  phrases  fondly 
supposed  to  be  French.  The  dramatic  critic  is  wont 
to  refer  to  the  rentree  of  an  old  favorite  when  he 
means  his  or  her  reappearance  ;  and  he  comments 
on  the  skilful  way  in  which  M.  Sardou  brings 
about  his  denoument, —  and  for  this  there  is  per 
haps  some  excuse,  as  there  is  no  English  word 
which  is  the  exact  technical  equivalent  of  denou 
ment.  But  he  will  record  the  attempting  of  a  new 
role  by  the  ingeniie,  and  he  will  congratulate  that 


210  PEN  AND  INK. 

clever  comedienne  on  the  enlarging  of  her  repertoire. 
To  him  the  "juvenile  lead  "  is  zjeune premier  and 
the  tragic  actress  is  a  tragedienne  educated  at  the 
conservatoire.  In  his  eyes  a  ballet-dancer  is  a 
danseuse,  and  in  his  ears  the  comic  singer  sings  a 
chansonnette.  There  is  really  no  reason  for  this 
frequent  French  ;  and  although  the  vocabulary  of 
the  dramatic  critic  is  overworked,  with  a  little  care 
he  may  avoid  tautology  by  less  violent  means. 

Over  the  door  of  a  free-and-easy  or  cheap  con 
cert-saloon  near  Union  Square  I  have  seen  a 
transparency  announcing  that  the  place  was  a 
"Resorte  Musicale."  And  in  a  theatrical  weekly 
paper  I  discovered  once  an  advertisement  even 
more  remarkable.  I  give  it  here  as  it  stood,  chang 
ing  only  the  proper  names : 

ANNIE    BLACK, 

The   popular  favorite  and  Leading  Lady  of Theatre 

Comique,  will  be  at  liberty  after  June  to  engage  for  the  season 
of  '81-82,  as  Leading  Lady  with  first-class  comb.  Also 

E.  J.  BLACK, 

(Nee  EDWARD  BROWN,) 

CHARACTER  ACTOR. 

Please  read  this  carefully,  and  note  the  delight 
fully  inappropriate  use  of  nee,  and  the  purely  pro 
fessional  cutting  short  into  "  comb."  of  the  word 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN.  211 

"combination,"  technically  applied  to  strolling 
companies.  Above  all,  pray  remark  the  fact  that 
the  gray  mare  is  the  better  horse,  and  that  the  man 
has  given  up  his  own  name  for  his  wife's. 

It  would  not  be  fair  thus  to  rebuke  our  fellow- 
countrymen  without  noting  the  fact  that  the  French 
are  nowadays  quite  as  prone  to  quote  English  as 
the  English  are  to  quote  French,  and  also  that  there 
is  very  little  to  choose  between  the  results.  An 
article  on  sport  in  a  French  paper  is  almost  as  curi 
ous  and  macaronic  a  medley  as  an  article  on  the 
fashions  in  an  English  paper.  Just  as  the  techni 
cal  phrases  which  hint  at  the  mighty  mysteries 
of  ladies'  apparel  are  all  French,  so  the  technical 
phrases  of  masculine  outdoor  amusement  are  nearly 
all  English.  The  report  of  a  horse-race  as  it  ap 
pears  in  a  Parisian  newspaper  is  quite  as  comic  as 
the  description  of  a  bride's  gown  as  it  appears  in 
a  London  organ  of  society.  The  French  dandy, 
who  was  once  a  gandin,  and  who  is  now  a  gom- 
meux,  is  driven  to  the  course  in  a  breach  drawn  by 
a  pair  of  steppers ;  on  the  track  he  mingles  with 
the  betting-men  and  makes  a  book.  Thus  he  ac 
complishes  his  duty  to  society,  and  is  acknowl 
edged  to  be  tout  ce  qu'ily  a  de  plus  hig-lif.  We 
are  informed  and  believe  that  this  strange  perver 
sion  of  "  high  life  "  is  pronounced  as  it  is  written, 


212  PEN  AND  INK. 

"  hig-lif."  When  the  French  swell  is  not  mingling 
with  the  other  s~portmen  on  the  turf,  he  has  per 
haps  gone  to  the  river  to  see  the  rovingmen,  or 
into  some  garden  to  watch  the  jeunes  misses  play 
ing  crockett,  by  which  last  word  the  French  are 
wont  to  designate  the  formerly  popular  game  of 
croquet.  In  the  summer,  or  rather  in  the  early 
autumn,  he  varies  these  amusements  by  a  paper- 
chase  of  some  unknown  variety,  which  he  compla 
cently  calls  a  ratty  e-papier. 

To  see  just  how  far  can  go  this  absurd  com 
mingling  of  tongues,  complicated  by  preternatu- 
rally  ingenious  blundering,  one  must  give  his  days 
and  nights  to  the  reading  of  the  '  Garnet  d'un 
Mondain,'  which  the  Figaro  publishes  under  the 
signature  of  "  Etincelle."  To  see  how  even  clever 
and  well-informed  writers  may  err  in  bad  com 
pany,  one  must  read  the  always  interesting  and 
often  instructive  chroniques  which  M.  Jules  Clare- 
tie  contributed  every  week  to  the  Temps,  and 
which  were  gathered  together  every  year  under 
the  title  of  '  La  Vie  a  Paris.'  M.  Claretie  reads 
English,  and  he  has  travelled  in  England ;  but  he 
makes  repeated  use  of  a  hybrid  verb  — interwiever, 
which  we  assume  to  be  some  sort  of  a  Gallicized 
interview.  Interwiever  is  the  act  accomplished  by 
the  reporter — another  word  which  the  French 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN.  2l} 

have  snatched  across  the  Channel.  But  interwiever, 
bad  as  it  is,  and  absurd  as  it  is,  is  not  a  whit 
worse  or  more  absurd  than  double-entendre  and 
soubriquet.  In  fact,  the  better  one  knows  the 
popular  misinformation  on  both  sides  of  the  Chan 
nel,  the  more  willingly  will  one  admit  that  honors 
are  easy,  and  that  English  bad  French  is  no  better 
and  no  worse  than  French  bad  English. 

Ten  years  ago  M.  Justin  Amero  put  forth  two 
little  pamphlets  full  of  the  most  amusing  blunders 
of  the  Anglo-Frenchman  and  the  Franco-English 
man.  .One,  '  L'Anglomanie  dans  le  francais  et  les 
barbarismes  anglais  usites  en  France/ was  intended 
to  warn  those  of  his  fellow-countrymen  who 
write  "  Times  is  money  "  in  the  belief  that  they 
are  quoting  Shakspere;  and  the  other,  'French 
Gibberish,'  a  review  showing  how  the  French  lan 
guage  is  misused  in  England  and  in  other  English- 
speaking  countries,  was  meant  for  those  who 
write  coute  qui  coute  instead  of  coute  que  coute. 

There  is  an  ancient  and  musty  jest  about  a  city 
madam  who  spoke  only  the  French  habitually  used 
in  young  ladies'  schools,  and  who  rendered  into 
English  the  familiar  ris  de  veau  a  la  financiere  as 
"a  smile  of  the  little  cow  in  the  manner  of  the 
female  financier."  But  this  is  not  more  startling 
than  many  other  things  to  be  discovered  by  those 


214  PEN  AND  INK- 

who  search  the  cook-books  diligently.  I  remem 
ber  a  bill  of  fare  in  an  American  hotel  in  which 
all  the  familiar  dishes  were  translated  into  unfamil 
iar  French,  the  climax  being  reached  when  ginger- 
snaps,  the  sole  dessert,  appeared  transmogrified  into 
gateux  de  gingembre.  Perhaps  it  is  in  revenge  for 
repeated  insults  like  this  that  the  Parisians  now 
advertise  on  the  windows  of  the  cafes  on  the  boule 
vards  that  Boissons  Americaines  are  sold  within, 
the  only  American  drink  particularized  being  a  cer 
tain  "  Shery  Gobbler,"  warranted  to  warm  the 
heart  of  all  vagrant  American  humorists  who  may 
chance  to  visit  Paris  while  alive  and  in  the  flesh. 
In  essence  sbery  gobbler  is  but  little  more  comic 
than  rosbif,  or  than  biftech,  which  are  recognized 
French  forms  of  the  roast  beef  of  old  England  and 
of  the  beefsteak  which  plays  second  to  it.  Both 
rosbif  and  bifteck  are  accepted  by  Littre,  who  finds 
for  the  latter  a  sponsor  as  early  and  as  eminent  as 
Voltaire.  And  sbery  gobbler  is  not  as  comic  as  ' '  cut- 
lete"  and  "tartlete,"  which  I  detected  day  after 
day  on  the  bill  of  fare  of  a  Cunard  steamer  crossing 
from  Liverpool  to  New-York  three  or  four  years 
ago.  When  I  drew  the  attention  of  a  fellow- 
traveller  to  the  constant  recurrence  of  the  superflu 
ous  e  at  the  end  of  cutlet  and  tartlet,  the  active  and 
intelligent  steward,  who  anticipated  our  slightest 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN. 


215 


wants,  leant  forward  with  a  benignant  smile,  and 
benevolently  explained  the  mystery.  "It's  the 
French,  sir,"  he  said;  "cutlete  and  tartlete  is 
French,  sir ! " 

A  bill  of  fare  at  the  Grand  Hotel  in  Paris,  in 
1885,  offered  "  Irisch-stew  a  la  franchise  " — truly 
a  marvellous  dish.  In  a  certain  restaurant  of  the 
Palais  Royal,  however,  there  is  a  bi-Iingual  bill  of 
fare  which  recalls  the  Portuguese  '  Guide  to  Con 
versation/  if  indeed  it  does  not  "break  the  record." 
In  this  we  are  proffered  our  choice  of  "barbue 
dutch  manner  " (barbue  a  la  Hottandai&e),  or  "  eel 
in  tartar,"  or  of  "a  sole  at  Colbert."  We  may 
have  "beef  at  flamande  "  or  "  beef  at  mode  "  (bceuf 
a  la  mode),  or  "beefsteack  with  haricots."  The 
cotelette  saute  a  la  minute  appears  as  "  one  mutton 
chop  at  minute,"  and  a  cotelette  de  chevreuil  appears 
as  "  a  chops  of  kid  "  (sic).  We  may  order,  if  we 
will,  a  "  fillet  napolitan  manner,"  or  a  "  chicken  at 
Marengo,"  or  a  "  sweet  bread  at  fmanciere." 

But  quite  the  wildest  linguistic  freak  which  ever 
came  within  my  ken  is  the  following  notice,  copied 
years  ago  from  the  original  as  it  hung  on  the  walls 
of  a  cheap  hotel  in  New- York  frequented  by  the 
smaller  theatrical  people  of  all  nationalities :  "  Mes 
sier  et  Medammes  chaque  Diners,  soupes,  etc.,  se 
que  ont  portez  dan  le  chambres  son  chargait  a  par." 


2i6  PEN  AND  INK. 

Of  the  many  amusing  stories  in  circulation  and 
turning  on  an  English  misuse  of  French,  the  most 
popular  is  perhaps  the  anecdote  in  which  one  of 
two  gentlemen  occupying  an  apartment  in  Paris 
leaves  word  with  the  concierge  that  he  does  not 
wish  his  fire  to  go  out ;  as  he  unfortunately  ex 
presses  this  desire  in  the  phrase  "  ne  laissez  pas 
sortir  le  fou,"  much  inconvenience  results  to  the 
other  gentleman,  who  is  detained  in  the  apartment 
as  a  dangerous  lunatic.  This  pleasant  tale  has  in 
its  time  been  fathered  on  many  famous  English 
men.  And  like  unto  it  is  another  which  Ameri 
cans  are  wont  to  place  to  the  credit  of  a  Cockney, 
while  the  English  are  sure  that  its  true  hero  was  a 
Yankee — both  parties  acting  on  the  old  principle 
of  "putting  the  Frenchman  up  the  chimney  when 
the  tale  is  told  in  England."  The  story  goes 
that  a  certain  Anglo-Saxon — for  thus  I  may  avoid 
international  complications — entered  into  a  Paris 
ian  restaurant  with  intent  to  eat,  drink,  and  be 
merry.  Wishing  to  inform  the  waiter  of  his  hun 
ger  he  said,  "J'ai  une  femme!"  to  which  the 
polite  but  astonished  waiter  naturally  responded, 
"J'espere  que  madame  se  porte  bien?"  Where 
upon  the  Anglo-Saxon  makes  a  second  attempt  at 
the  French  for  hunger,  and  asserts,  "Je  suis 
fameux !  "  to  which  the  waiter's  obvious  reply  is, 


ON  THE  FRENCH  SPOKEN. 


217 


"Je  suis  bien  aise  de  le  savoir,  monsieur !  "  Then 
the  Anglo-Saxon  girded  up  his  loins  and  made  a 
final  effort,  and  declared,  "Je  suis  femmel"  to 
which  the  waiter  could  answer  only,  "Alors 
madame  s'habille  d'une  facon  tres-etrange."  After 
which  the  Anglo-Saxon  fled  and  was  seen  no  more. 
This  merry  jest  came  to  me  by  word  of  mouth 
and  vouched  for  by  an  eye-witness ;  but  I  am  told 
on  good  authority  that  it  was  used  by  the  elder 
Charles  Mathews  in  one  of  his  At  Homes  at  least 
half  a  century  ago. 

(1887) 


IX 

THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


EW  literary  tasks  seem  easier  of  ac 
complishment  than  the  making  of  a 
good  play  out  of  a  good  novel.  The 
playwright  has  ready  to  his  hand  a 
story,  a  sequence  of  situations,  a 
group  of  characters  artfully  contrasted,  the  sug 
gestion  of  the  requisite  scenery,  and  occasional 
passages  of  appropriate  conversation.  What  more 
is  needed  than  a  few  sheets  of  paper  and  a  pair  of 
scissors,  a  pen  and  a  little  plodding  patience  ?  The 
pecuniary  reward  is  abundant;  apparently  the  feat 
is  temptingly  facile;  and  every  year  we  see  many 
writers  succumb  to  the  temptation.  Whenever  a 
novel  hits  the  popular  fancy  and  is  seen  for  a 
season  in  everybody's  hands,  be  it  '  Mr.  Barnes  of 
New  York 'or  'She,'  'The  Quick  or  the  Dead  ?' 
or  'Robert  Elsmere,'  the  adapter  steps  forward 
and  sets  the  story  on  the  stage,  counting  on  the 
reflected  reputation  of  the  novel  to  attract  the  pub 
lic  to  witness  the  play.  But  the  result  of  the  cal 
culation  is  rarely  satisfactory,  and  the  dramatized 


222  PEN  AND  INK. 

romance  is  rarely  successful.  Frequently  it  Is  an 
instant  failure,  like  the  recent  perversion  of '  Robert 
Elsmere ' ;  occasionally  it  is  forced  into  a  fleeting 
popularity  by  managerial  wiles,  like  the  stage  ver 
sions  of  '  She  '  and  '  Mr.  Barnes  of  New  York' ;  and 
only  now  and  again  is  it  really  welcomed  by  the 
public,  like  the  dramatizations  of '  Little  Lord  Faun- 
tleroy '  and  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.'  So  it  is  that,  if 
we  look  back  along  the  lists  of  plays  which  have 
had  prolonged  popularity,  we  shall  find  the  titles 
of  very  few  dramatizations,  and  we  shall  discover 
that  those  which  chance  to  linger  in  our  memory 
are  recalled  chiefly  because  of  a  fortuitous  associa 
tion  with  the  fame  of  a  favorite  actor;  thus  the 
semi-operatic  version  of  '  Guy  Mannering '  brings 
before  us  Charlotte  Cushman's  weird  embodiment 
of  Meg  Merrilies,  just  as  the  artless  adaptation  of 
the  '  Gilded  Age '  evokes  the  joyous  humor  of  John 
T.  Raymond  as  Colonel  Sellers.  And  if  we  were 
to  make  out  a  list  of  novels  which  have  been 
adapted  to  the  stage  in  the  past  thirty  years  or  so, 
we  should  discover  a  rarely  broken  record  of  over 
whelming  disaster. 

The  reason  of  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  It  is  to  be 
found  in  the  fundamental  difference  between  the 
art  of  the  drama  and  the  art  of  prose-fiction  —  a 
difference  which  the  adapter  has  generally  ignored 
or  been  ignorant  of.  Perhaps  it  is  not  unfair  to 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS.  223 

suggest  that  the  methods  of  the  dramatist  and  of 
the  novelist  are  as  unlike  as  the  methods  of  the 
sculptor  and  of  the  painter.  The  difference  be 
tween  the  play  and  the  novel  is  at  bottom  the  dif 
ference  between  a  precise  and  rigid  form,  and  a 
form  of  almost  unlimited  range  and  flexibility.  The 
drama  has  laws  as  unbending  as  those  of  the  son 
net,  while  the  novel  may  extend  itself  to  the  full 
license  of  an  epic.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  nowadays  the  novelist  has  complete  freedom 
in  choice  of  subject  and  in  method  of  treatment. 
He  may  be  concise  or  he  may  be  prolix.  He  may 
lay  the  scene  of  his  story  in  a  desert,  and  find  his 
effect  in  the  slow  analysis  of  a  single  human  soul 
in  awful  solitude;  or  he  may  create  a  regiment  of 
characters  which  shall  perform  intricate  evolutions 
and  move  in  serried  ranks  through  the  crowded 
streets  of  a  busy  city.  He  may  riot  in  the  great 
phenomena  of  nature,  forcing  the  tornado,  the  gale 
at  sea,  the  plunge  of  a  cataract,  the  purple  sunset 
after  a  midsummer  storm,  to  create  his  catastrophe 
or  to  typify  some  mood  of  his  hero.  He  may  be 
a  persistent  pessimist,  believing  that  all  is  for  the 
worst  in  the  worst  of  all  possible  worlds,  and 
painting  his  fellow-man  in  harsh  black-and-white, 
with  a  most  moderate  use  of  the  white.  He  may 
be  a  philosopher,  using  a  thin  veil  of  fiction  as  a 
transparent  mask  for  the  exposition  of  his  system 


224 


PEN  AND  INK. 


of  life.  He  may  adopt  the  novel  as  a  platform  or 
as  a  pulpit;  he  may  use  it  as  a  means  or  he  may  ac 
cept  it  as  an  end ;  he  may  do  with  it  what  he  will; 
and  if  he  be  a  man  to  whom  the  world  wishes  to 
listen  or  a  man  who  has  really  something  to  say, 
he  gains  a  hearing. 

In  contrast  with  the  license  of  the  novelist  the 
limitations  of  the  dramatist  were  never  more  dis 
tinct  than  they  are  to-day.  As  the  playwright 
appeals  to  the  play-goer,  he  is  confined  to  those 
subjects  in  which  the  broad  public  can  be  inter 
ested  and  to  the  treatment  which  the  broad  pub 
lic  will  accept.  While  the  writer  of  romance  may 
condense  his  work  into  a  short-story  of  a  column 
or  two,  or  expand  it  to  a  stout  tome  of  a  thousand 
pages,  the  writer  for  the  stage  has  no  such  choice  ; 
his  work  must  be  bulky  enough  to  last  from  half- 
past  eight  to  half-past  ten  at  the  shortest,  or  at  the 
longest  from  eight  to  eleven.  In  the  present  con 
dition  of  the  theatre  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  there  is  little  or  no  demand  for  the  comedi 
etta  or  for  the  two-act  comedy;  a  play  must  be 
long  enough  and  strong  enough  to  furnish  forth  the 
whole  evening's  entertainment.  The  dramatist  may 
divide  his  piece  into  three,  or  four,  or  five  acts,  as 
he  may  prefer,  but  except  from  some  good  and  suffi 
cient  reason,  there  must  be  but  a  single  scene  to 
each  act.  The  characters  must  be  so  many  in 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


225 


number  that  no  one  shall  seem  unduly  obtrusive  ; 
they  must  be  sharply  contrasted;  most  of  them 
must  be  sympathetic  to  the  spectators,  for  the 
audience  in  a  theatre,  however  pessimistic  it  may 
be  individually,  is  always  optimistic  as  a  whole. 
There  must  be  an  infusion  of  humor  at  recurrent 
intervals,  and  a  slowly  increasing  intensity  of  emo 
tional  stress.  In  short,  the  fetters  of  the  drama 
tist  are  as  obvious  as  is  the  freedom  of  the  novelist. 
Perhaps  the  chief  disadvantage  under  which  the 
dramatist  labors  is  that  it  is  almost  impossible  for 
him  to  show  adequately  the  progressive  and  well- 
nigh  imperceptible  disintegration  of  character 
under  the  attrition  of  recurring  circumstance. 
Time  and  space  are  both  beyond  the  control  of 
the  maker  of  plays,  while  the  story-teller  may 
take  his  hero  by  slow  stages  to  the  world's  end. 
The  drama  has  but  five  acts  at  most,  and  the 
theatre  is  but  a  few  yards  wide.  Description  is 
scarcely  permissible  in  a  play  ;  and  it  may  be  the 
most  beautiful  and  valuable  part  of  a  novel.  Com 
ment  by  the  author  is  absolutely  impossible  on 
the  stage  ;  and  there  are  many  who  love  certain 
novels  —  Thackeray's  for  example  —  chiefly  be 
cause  they  feel  therein  the  personal  presence  of 
the  author.  It  is  at  once  the  merit  and  the  diffi 
culty  of  dramatic  art  that  the  characters  must 
reveal  themselves  ;  they  must  be  illuminated  from 


226  PEN  AND  INK. 

within,  not  from  without ;  they  must  speak  for 
themselves  in  unmistakable  terms  ;  and  the  au 
thor  cannot  dissect  them  for  us  or  lay  bare  their 
innermost  thoughts  with  his  pen  as  with  a  scalpel. 
The  drama  must  needs  be  synthetic,  while  now 
the  novel,  more  often  than  not,  is  analytic.  The 
vocabulary  of  the  playwright  must  be  clear,  suc 
cinct,  precise,  and  picturesque,  while  that  of  the 
novelist  may  be  archaic,  fantastic,  subtle,  or  allu 
sive.  Simplicity  and  directness  are  the  ear-marks 
of  a  good  play;  but  we  all  know  good  novels 
which  are  complex,  involute,  tortuous.  A  French 
critic  has  declared  that  the  laws  of  the  drama  are 
Logic  and  Movement,  by  which  he  means  that  in 
a  good  play  the  subject  clearly  exposed  at  first 
moves  forward  by  regular  steps,  artfully  prepared, 
straight  to  its  inevitable  end. 

After  all,  art  is  but  a  question  of  selection  :  no 
man  can  put  the  whole  of  life  either  on  the  stage 
or  into  a  book.  He  must  choose  the  facts  which 
seem  to  him  salient  and  which  will  best  serve  his 
purpose.  He  must  reject  unhesitatingly  all  the 
others,  as  valuable  in  themselves,  it  may  be,  but 
foreign  to  the  work  in  hand.  The  principles  differ 
which  govern  this  selection  by  the  dramatist  and 
by  the  novelist.  Details  which  are  insignificant 
in  a  story  may  be  of  the  greatest  value  in  a  play  ; 
and  effects  of  prime  importance  in  the  tale  may  be 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


227 


contrary  to  the  practice  of  the  playwright,  or  even 
physically  impossible  on  the  stage.  George  Sand 
was  a  great  novelist  who  was  passionately  occu 
pied  with  the  theatre,  although  she  was  wholly 
without  the  dramatic  gift  ;  and  in  his  biographical 
study  of  her  career  and  her  character  the  late  M. 
Caro  noted  her  constant  failure  as  a  dramatist, 
both  with  original  plays  and  with  adaptations  of 
her  own  novels,  declaring  in  these  words  the  rea 
son  of  this  failure  :  "What  is  needed  on  the  stage 
is  the  art  of  relief,  the  instinct  of  perspective, 
adroitness  of  combination,  and,  above  all,  action, 
again  action,  and  always  action.  It  is  natural  and 
laughter-forcing  gaiety,  or  the  secret  of  power 
ful  emotion,  or  the  unexpectedness  which  grips 
the  attention" — all  qualities  which  George  Sand 
lacked. 

A  mere  sequence  of  tableaux  vivants,  even  if  it 
include  the  characters  and  present  the  situations 
of  a  successful  tale,  is  not  necessarily  a  successful 
play,  and  certainly  it  is  not  a  good  play.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  scissor  a  panorama  of  scenes  from 
a  story,  but  to  make  over  the  story  itself  into  a 
play  is  not  so  easy.  To  get  a  true  play  out  of  a 
novel,  the  dramatist  must  translate  the  essential 
idea  from  the  terms  of  narrative  into  the  terms  of 
the  drama.  He  must  disengage  the  fundamental 
subject  from  the  accidental  incidents  with  which 


228  PEN  AND  INK. 

the  novelist  has  presented  it.  He  must  strip  it  to 
the  skeleton,  and  then  he  must  clothe  these  bare 
bones  with  new  flesh  and  fresh  muscle  in  accord 
ance  with  the  needs  of  the  theatre.  He  must  dis 
entangle  the  primary  action,  and  set  this  on  the 
stage  clearly  and  simply.  To  do  this  it  may  be 
necessary  to  modify  characters,  to  alter  the 
sequence  of  scenes,  to  simplify  motives,  to  con 
dense,  to  clarify,  to  heighten.  The  more  famous 
the  novel  —  one  might  almost  say  the  better  the 
novel  —  the  less  likely  is  it  to  make  a  good  play, 
because  there  is  then  a  greater  difficulty  in  disen 
gaging  the  main  theme  from  its  subsidiary  de 
velopments  ;  and  even  when  the  playwright 
understands  his  trade,  and  realizes  the  gulf  which 
yawns  between  the  novel  and  the  drama,  the 
temptation  to  retain  this  fine  scene  of  the  story, 
or  that  delicately  drawn  character,  or  the  other 
striking  episode,  is  often  too  strong  to  be  over 
come,  though  he  knows  full  well  that  these 
things  are  alien  to  the  real  play  as  it  ought  to  be. 
The  playwright  is  conscious  that  the  play-goers 
may  look  for  these  unessential  scenes  and  charac 
ters  and  episodes,  and  he  yields  despite  his  judg 
ment.  Then  in  the  end  the  play  becomes  a  mere 
series  of  magic-lantern  slides  to  illustrate  the  book ; 
the  real  and  the  essential  disappear  behind  the  acci 
dental  and  incidental;  and  the  spectator  cannot 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


229 


see  the  forest  for  the  trees.  The  dramatizations  of 
Scott,  of  Cooper,  and  of  Dickens,  whatever  their 
temporary  popularity  might  be,  and  their  imme 
diate  pecuniary  success,  were  none  of  them  good 
plays,  nor  were  they  ever  wholly  satisfactory  to 
those  who  knew  and  loved  the  original  novels. 
And  Scott,  Cooper,  and  Dickens  are  all  sturdy 
and  robust  story-tellers,  whose  tales,  one  would 
think,  might  readily  lend  themselves  to  the  free 
hand  treatment  and  distemper  illumination  of  the 
theatre.  And  '  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  '  has  had  much 
the  same  fate  on  the  stage  ;  the  rough-hewn 
dramas  made  out  of  it  have  succeeded  by  no  art 
of  their  own,  but  because  of  the  overwhelming 
interest  of  the  novel.  I  know  of  no  stage  version 
of  Mrs.  Stowe's  story,  or  of  any  novel  of  Scott,  of 
Cooper,  or  of  Dickens,  which  has  either  organic 
unity  or  artistic  symmetry. 

The  finer  the  novel,  the  more  delicate  and  de 
lightful  its  workmanship,  the  more  subtle  its 
psychology,  the  greater  is  the  difficulty  in  drama 
tizing  it,  and  the  greater  the  ensuing  disappoint 
ment.  The  frequent  attempts  to  turn  into  a  play 
'Vanity  Fair'  and  the  'Scarlet  Letter'  were  all 
doomed  to  the  certainty  of  failure,  because  the 
development  of  the  central  character  and  the  lead 
ing  motives,  as  we  see  them  in  the  pages  of  the 
novelist,  are  not  those  by  which  they  would  best 


230 


PEN  AND  INK. 


be  revealed  before  the  footlights.  A  true  dramatist 
might  treat  dramatically  the  chief  figures  of  Thack 
eray's  novel  or  of  Hawthorne's  romance.  I  can 
conceive  a  Becky  Sharp  play  and  an  Arthur 
Dimmesdale  drama — the  first  a  comedy,  with  un 
derlying  emotion  ;  and  the  second  a  tragedy,  noble 
in  its  simple  dignity  :  but  neither  of  these  possi 
ble  plays  would  be  in  any  strict  sense  of  the  word 
dramatized  from  the  novel,  although  the  germi- 
nant  suggestion  was  derived  from  Thackeray  and 
from  Hawthorne.  They  would  be  original  plays, 
independent  in  form,  in  treatment,  and  in  move 
ment  ;  much  as  '  All  for  Her '  is  an  original  play 
by  Messrs.  Simpson  and  Merivale,  though  it  was 
obviously  suggested  by  the  essential  ideas  of 
'Henry  Esmond'  and  'A  Tale  of  Two  Cities,' 
which  were  adroitly  combined  by  two  accom 
plished  playwrights  feeling  themselves  at  liberty 
to  develop  their  theme  without  any  sense  of 
responsibility  to  the  novelists.  In  like  manner 
Mr.  Boucicault's  admirably  effective  dramas,  the 
'Colleen  Bawn '  and  the  'Long  Strike,'  are 
founded,  one  on  the  '  Collegians  '  of  Gerald  GrifTm, 
and  the  other  on  Mrs.  Gaskell's  '  Mary  Barton ' ; 
but  the  dramatist,  while  availing  himself  freely  of 
the  novelist's  labors,  held  himself  equally  free  to 
borrow  from  them  no  more  than  he  saw  fit,  and 
felt  in  nowise  bound  to  preserve  in  the  play  what 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


231 


did  not  suit  him  in  the  story.  I  am  told  that  the 
foundation  of  Lord  Lytton's  '  Richelieu '  can  be 
discovered  in  a  romance  by  G.  P.  R.  James  ;  and 
I  have  heard  that  a  little  story  by  Jules  Sandeau 
was  the  exciting  cause  of  MM.  Sandeau  and  Au- 
gier's  '  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,'  the  finest  comedy 
of  our  century.  At  all  times  have  playwrights 
been  prone  to  take  a  ready-made  myth.  The 
great  Greeks  did  it,  using  Homer  as  a  quarry  from 
which  to  get  the  rough  blocks  of  marble  needed 
for  their  heroic  statues;  while  Shakspere  found 
material  for  more  than  one  piece  in  contemporary 
prose-fiction.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to  consider 
any  of  these  plays  as  a  mere  dramatization  of  a 
novel. 

The  difficulties  and  disadvantages  of  trying  to 
make  a  play  out  of  a  popular  tale,  when  the  se 
quence  and  development  of  the  story  must  be 
retained  in  the  drama,  are  so  distinctly  recognized 
by  novelists  who  happen  also  to  be  dramatists, 
that  they  are  prone  to  stand  aside  and  to  leave  the 
doubtful  task  to  others.  Dumas  did  not  himself 
make  a  play  out  of  his  romantic  tale,  the  '  Corsican 
Brothers.'  And  in  the  fall  of  1887  there  were  pro 
duced  in  Paris  two  adaptations  of  successful 
novels  which  had  been  written  by  accomplished 
dramatists,  'L'Abbe  Constantin,'  by  M.  Ludovic 
Halevy,  and  '  L' Affaire  Clemenceau,'  by  M.  Alex- 


PEN  AND  INK. 


andre  Dumas  fits;  and  in  neither  case  did  the 
dramatist  adapt  his  own  story.  He  knew  better; 
he  knew  that  the  good  novel  would  not  make  a 
good  play  ;  and  while  the  novice  rushed  in  where 
the  expert  feared  to  tread,  the  original  author 
stood  aside,  ready  to  take  the  profit,  but  not  to 
run  the  risk. 

I  trust  that  I  have  not  suggested  that  there  are  no 
novels  which  it  is  profitable  or  advisable  to  adapt 
to  the  stage.  Such  was  not  my  intent,  at  least. 
What  I  wished  to  point  out  was  that  a  panorama 
was  not  a  play  ;  that  to  make  a  play  out  of  a 
novel  properly  was  a  most  difficult  task  ;  and 
that  the  more  widely  popular  the  story,  the  less 
likely  was  the  resultant  piece  to  be  valuable, 
because  of  the  greater  pressure  to  retain  scenes 
foreign  to  the  main  theme  as  necessarily  simplified 
and  strengthened  for  the  theatre. 

Sometimes  a  story  is  readily  set  on  the  stage, 
because  it  was  planned  for  the  theatre  before  it 
appeared  as  a  book.  M.  Georges  Ohnet's  '  Serge 
Panine,'  for  example,  was  first  written  as  a  play 
and  afterward  as  a  novel,  although  the  piece  was 
not  performed  until  after  the  story  had  achieved 
success.  Charles  Reade's  'Peg  Woffington  '  is 
avowedly  founded  on  the  comedy  of  '  Masks  and 
Faces,'  which  Reade  had  written  in  collaboration 
with  Tom  Taylor,  and  of  which  it  may  seem  to 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


233 


be  a  dramatization.  Reade  also  found  it  easy  to 
make  an  effective  play  out  of  his  '  Never  Too  Late 
to  Mend,'  because  this  novel  was  itself  based  on 
'Gold,'  an  earlier  piece  of  his. 

Nor  is  this  ex-post-facto  dramatization  the  only 
possible  or  proper  adaptation  of  a  novel.  A  story 
of  straightforward  emotion  may  often  be  set  on 
the  stage  to  advantage,  and  with  less  alteration 
than  is  demanded  by  the  more  complex  novel  of 
character.  Mr.  R.  L.  Stevenson  declares  that  "a 
good  serious  play  must  be  founded  on  one  of  the 
passionate  cruces  of  life,  where  duty  and  inclina 
tion  come  nobly  to  the  grapple  ;  and  the  same  is 
true  of  what  I  call,  for  that  reason,  the  dramatic 
novel."  Now  it  is  this  dramatic  novel,  handling 
broadly  a  pregnant  emotion,  which  can  most 
often  be  dramatized  successfully  and  satisfactorily. 
And  yet,  even  then,  the  story  is  perhaps  best  set 
on  the  stage  by  a  playwright  who  has  never  read 
it.  This  may  sound  like  a  paradox,  but  I  can 
readily  explain  what  I  mean.  A  well-known 
French  piece,  'Miss  Multon,'  is  obviously 
founded  on  the  English  novel  'East  Lynne.'  I 
once  asked  M.  Eugene  Nus,  one  of  the  authors  of 
'  Miss  Multon,'  how  he  came  to  adapt  an  Eng 
lish  book  ;  and  he  laughingly  answered  that  nei 
ther  he  nor  his  collaborator,  M.  Adolphe  Belot, 
had  ever  read  '  East  Lynne/  At  a  pause  during  a 


234  PEN  AND  1NK- 

rehearsal  of  another  play  of  theirs,  an  actress  had 
told  M.  Belot  that  she  had  just  finished  a  story 
which  would  make  an  excellent  play,  and  there 
upon  she  gave  him  the  plot  of  Mrs.  Wood's  novel. 
And  the  plot,  the  primary  suggestion,  the  first 
nucleus  of  situation  and  character,  this  is  all  these 
dramatists  needed  ;  and  in  most  cases  it  is  all  that 
the  dramatist  ought  to  borrow  from  the  novelist. 
It  is  thus  that  we  may  account  in  part  for  the 
merit  of  Mr.  Pinero's  play  the  'Squire,'  which 
is  perhaps  more  or  less  remotely  derived  from 
Mr.  Hardy's  'Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd.' 
Not  to  have  read  the  story  he  is  to  dramatize  is, 
however,  a  privilege  possible  to  but  few  play 
wrights. 

The  next  best  thing  is  to  have  the  needful 
power  to  disengage  the  main  theme  of  the  story 
and  to  be  able  to  reincarnate  this  in  a  dramatic 
body.  A  good  example  may  be  seen  in  '  Esmer- 
alda,'  the  comedy  which  Mr.  William  Gillette 
helped  Mrs.  Burnett  to  make  out  of  a  tale  of  hers. 
But  this  has  been  done  so  rarely  on  the  English- 
speaking  stage  that  I  must  perforce  seek  other 
examples  in  France.  As  it  happens,  I  can  name 
three  plays,  all  founded  on  novels,  all  adapted  to 
the  stage  by  the  novelist  himself,  and  all  really 
superior  to  the  novels  from  which  they  were 
taken.  M.  Jules  Sandeau's  '  Mademoiselle  de  la 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS.  235 

Seigliere  '  is  a  pretty  tale,  but  the  comedy  which 
the  late  eminent  comedian,  M.  Regnier  of  the 
Comedie-Francaise,  aided  M.  Sandeau  to  found 
upon  it  is  far  finer  as  a  work  of  literature.  '  Le 
Marquis  de  Villemer '  of  George  Sand  is  a  lovely 
novel,  but  it  lacks  the  firmness,  the  force,  and  the 
symmetry  to  be  found  in  the  play  which  M.  Alex- 
andre  Dumas  fils  helped  her  to  construct  from  it, 
and  which,  therefore,  won  the  popular  favor  denied 
to  most  of  her  other  dramatic  attempts.  And  in 
like  manner  M.  Dumas  himself  recomposed  his 
'Dame  aux  Camelias,'  and  made  a  moving  novel 
into  one  of  the  most  moving  plays  of  our  time. 
In  all  three  cases  the  drama  is  widely  different  from 
the  story,  and  the  many  needful  modifications  have 
been  made  with  marvellous  technical  skill.  Hardly 
any  more  profitable  investigation  could  be  sug 
gested  to  the  prentice  playwright  than  first  to 
read  one  of  these  novels,  and  then  to  compare  it 
faithfully  with  the  play  which  its  author  evolved 
from  it  ;  and  the  student  of  the  physics  of  play- 
making  could  have  no  better  laboratory  work  than 
to  think  out  the  reasons  for  every  change. 

Such  a  student  will  discover,  for  instance,  that 
the  dramatist  cannot  avail  himself  of  one  of  the 
most  effective  devices  of  the  novelist,  who  may 
keep  a  secret  from  his  readers,  which  is  either 
revealed  to  them  unexpectedly  and  all  at  once, 


236  PEN  AND  INK. 

or  which  they  are  allowed  to  solve  for  themselves 
from  chance  hints  skilfully  let  fall  in  the  course  of 
the  narrative.  But  the  dramatist  knows  that  to 
keep  a  secret  from  the  spectator  for  the  sake  of 
a  single  sudden  surprise  is  to  sacrifice  to  one 
little  and  temporary  shock  of  discovery  the  cu 
mulative  force  of  a  heroic  struggle  against  a  fore 
seen  catastrophe.  To  take  an  example  from  one 
of  the  most  accomplished  of  Greek  playwrights, 
the  strife  against  awakening  doubt,  the  wrestling 
with  a  growing  conviction,  the  agony  of  final 
knowledge  which  we  see  in  'CEdipus,'  and  the 
indisputable  effect  these  have  on  us,  are  the  re 
sult  of  not  keeping  a  secret.  The  great  play  of 
Sophocles  has  the  interest  of  expectation,  though 
every  spectator  might  foresee  and  foretell  the  out 
come  of  the  opening  situations.  True  dramatic 
interest  is  aroused,  not  by  deceiving  or  disap 
pointing  the  audience  as  to  the  end  to  be  reached, 
or  even  by  keeping  it  unduly  in  doubt  as  to  this, 
but  by  choosing  the  least  commonplace  and  most 
effective  means  of  reaching  that  end.  And  true 
dramatic  interest  is  sustained,  not  by  a  vulgar 
surprise,  but  by  exciting  the  sympathy  of  the 
spectator  for  the  character  immeshed  in  dangers 
which  the  audience  comprehend  clearly  —  by  ex 
citing  the  sympathy  of  the  spectator  so  that  he 
becomes  the  accomplice  of  the  playwright,  putting 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


himself  in  the  place  of  the  persons  of  the  play,  and 
feeling  with  them  as  the  dread  catastrophe  draws 
nigh. 

The  novelist  may  play  tricks  with  his  readers, 
because  he  knows  that  they  can  take  time  to 
think  if  they  are  in  doubt,  and  can  even  turn 
back  a  chapter  or  two  to  straighten  out  the  se 
quence  of  events.  But  the  dramatist  knows  that 
the  spectators  have  no  time  for  retrospection  and 
for  piecing  together,  and  therefore  he  is  not  war 
ranted  in  leaving  them  in  the  dark  for  a  minute. 
And  it  is  this  total  divergence  of  principle  that  so 
many  novelists,  and  so  many  of  those  who  attempt 
to  dramatize  novels,  absolutely  fail  to  apprehend. 
In  her  needless  biography  of  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan,  Mrs.  OHphant  found  fault  with  the 
screen  scene  of  the  '  School  for  Scandal '  because 
we  see  Lady  Teazle  conceal  herself.  "  It  would, 
no  doubt,"  she  wrote,  "have  been  higher  art 
could  the  dramatist  have  deceived  his  audience  as 
well  as  the  personages  of  the  play,  and  made  us 
also  parties  in  the  surprise  of  the  discovery." 
This  criticism  is  simply  a  master  stroke  of  dra 
matic  incompetence, and  it  is  astounding  that  any 
one  able  to  read  and  write  could  consider  that 
most  marvelous  specimen  of  dramatic  construc 
tion,  the  screen  scene  of  the  '  School  for  Scan 
dal,'  without  seeing  that  the  whole  effect  of  the 


238  PEN  AND  INK. 

situation,  and  half  the  force  of  the  things  said  and 
done  by  the  characters  on  the  stage,  would  be 
lost  if  we  did  not  know  that  Lady  Teazle  was  in 
hiding  within  hearing  of  Joseph's  impotent  expla 
nations,  Charles's  careless  gaiety,  and  Sir  Peter's 
kindly  thoughtfulness. 

In  a  play  there  must  be  as  little  as  possible  of 
either  confusion  or  doubt.  As  the  French  critic 
said,  the  laws  of  the  drama  are  Logic  and  Move 
ment —  logic  in  the  exposition  and  sequence  of 
events,  movement  in  the  emotions  presented. 
And  here  we  come  to  another  dissimilarity  of  the 
drama  from  prose-fiction — the  need  of  more  care 
ful  and  elaborate  structure  in  a  play.  A  novel  a 
man  may  make  up  as  he  goes  along  haphazard, 
but  in  a  play  the  last  word  must  be  thought  out 
before  the  first  word  is  written.  The  plot  must 
move  forward  unhesitatingly  to  its  inevitable  con 
clusion.  There  can  be  no  wavering,  no  faltering, 
no  lingering  by  the  wayside.  And  every  effect, 
every  turn  of  the  story,  must  be  prepared  adroitly 
and  unostentatiously.  M.  Legouve  calls  the  play 
goer  both  exacting  and  inconsistent,  in  that  he 
insists  that  everything  which  passes  before  him  on 
the  stage  shall  be  at  once  foretold  and  unforeseen. 
The  play-goer  is  shocked  if  anything  drops  from 
the  clouds  unexpected,  yet  he  is  bored  if  anything 
is  unduly  announced.  The  dramatist  must  now 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


239 


and  again  take  the  play-goers  into  his  confidence 
by  a  chance  word  to  which  they  pay  no  attention 
at  the  time,  so  that  when  the  situation  abruptly 
turns  on  itself,  they  say  to  themselves,  "Why,  of 
course;  he  warned  us  of  that.  What  fools  we 
were  not  to  guess  what  was  coming!"  And 
then  they  are  delighted. 

In  considering  Lord  Tennyson's  'Queen  Mary' 
when  it  first  appeared,  Mr.  Henry  James  remarked 
that  the  "fine  thing  in  a  real  drama  is  that,  more 
than  any  other  work  of  literary  art,  it  needs  a 
masterly  structure,  a  process  which  makes  a  de 
mand  upon  an  artist's  rarest  gifts."  And  then 
Mr.  James  compressed  a  chapter  of  criticism  into 
a  figure  of  speech.  "The  five-act  drama,"  he 
said,  "serious  or  humorous,  poetic  or  prosaic,  is 
like  a  box  of  fixed  dimensions  and  inelastic  mate 
rial,  into  which  a  mass  of  precious  things  are  to  be 
packed  away.  .  .  .  The  precious  things  seem 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  compass  of  the  recep 
tacle;  but  the  artist  has  an  assurance  that  with 
patience  and  skill  a  place  may  be  made  for  each, 
and  that  nothing  need  be  clipped  or  crimped, 
squeezed  or  damaged."  It  is  this  infinite  patience 
and  this  surpassing  skill  that  the  ordinary  theatri 
cal  adapter  of  a  novel  is  wholly  without.  He 
does  not  acknowledge  the  duties  of  the  dramatist, 
and  he  is  hardly  conscious  even  that  a  play  is  a 


340  PEN  AND  INK. 

work  of  literary  art.  Few  of  those  who  try  to 
write  for  the  stage,  without  having  penetrated  the 
secret  of  the  drama,  realize  the  indisputable  neces 
sity  of  the  preliminary  plan.  They  do  not  suspect 
that  a  play  must  needs  be  built  as  carefully  and  as 
elaborately  as  a  cathedral,  in  which  not  only  the 
broad  nave  and  the  massive  towers  but  every  airy 
pinnacle  and  every  flying  buttress  contribute  to 
the  total  effect.  As  the  architect,  who  is  primarily 
an  artist,  must  do  his  work  in  full  accord  with  the 
needs  of  the  civil  engineer  who  understands  the 
mechanics  of  building,  so  the  dramatist,  who  deals 
with  human  character  and  human  passion,  is 
guided  in  his  labor  by  the  precepts  and  practice  of 
the  mere  play-maker,  the  expert  who  is  master  of 
the  mechanics  of  the  stage.  The  accomplished 
architect  is  his  own  civil  engineer,  and  the  true 
dramatist  is  a  playwright  also,  a  man  fully  conver 
sant  with  the  possibilities  of  the  theatre  and  fully 
recognizing  its  limitations.  "To  work  success 
fully  beneath  a  few  grave,  rigid  laws,"  said  Mr. 
James  in  the  criticism  from  which  I  have  already 
quoted,  "  is  always  a  strong  man's  highest  ideal 
of  success."  This  serves  to  explain  why  the  son 
net,  with  its  inexorable  rules,  has  been  ever  a  favor 
ite  with  great  poets,  and  why  the  drama  with  its 
metes  and  bounds  has  always  had  a  fascination  for 
the  literary  artist 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS.  241 

Some  of  the  limitations  of  the  drama  are  inhe 
rent  in  the  form  itself,  and  are  therefore  immutable 
and  permanent.  Some  are  external,  and  are  there 
fore  temporary  and  variable.  For  example,  it  has 
always  seemed  to  me  that  inadequate  attention 
has  been  given  to  the  influence  exerted  on  dra 
matic  literature  by  the  size  of  the  theatre  and  by 
the  circumstances  of  the  performance.  This  influ 
ence  was  most  potent  in  shaping  the  Greek  drama, 
the  Elizabethan  plays  of  England,  and  the  French 
tragedy  under  Louis  XIV.  The  unadorned  direct 
ness  of  ./Eschylus  impresses  us  mightily;  the  same 
massive  breadth  of  treatment  we  find  also,  al 
though  in  a  minor  degree,  in  Sophocles  and 
Euripides:  on  all  three  dramatists  it  was  imposed 
by  the  physical  conditions  of  the  theatre.  Their 
plays  were  to  be  performed  out  of  doors,  by  actors 
speaking  through  a  resonant  mouthpiece  in  a  huge 
mask,  and  lifted  on  high  shoes  so  that  they  might 
be  seen  by  thousands  of  spectators  from  all  classes 
of  the  people.  Of  necessity  the  dramatist  chose 
for  his  subject  a  familiar  tale,  and  gave  it  the  ut 
most  simplicity  of  plot,  while  he  sought  a  gradually 
increasing  intensity  of  emotion.  The  movement 
of  his  story  must  needs  be  slow;  there  was  no 
change  of  scene,  and  there  was  no  violence  of  ac 
tion.  Thus  it  happens  that  the  impassable  dignity 
of  the  Greek  drama  was  due,  not  wholly  to  the 


242 


PEN  AND  INK. 


esthetic  principles  of  Greek  art,  but  to  the  physi 
cal  conditions  of  the  Greek  theatre.  The  so-called 
rule  of  the  three  unities  —  the  rule  that  a  play 
should  show  but  one  action  in  one  place  and  in 
one  day,  a  rule  that  later  critics  deduced  from  the 
practice  of  the  Greeks  —  was  not  consciously 
obeyed  by  ./Eschylus,  Sophocles,  or  Euripides,  al 
though  the  most  of  their  plays  seem  to  fall  within 
it,  simply  from  force  of  circumstances. 

As  different  as  may  be  were  the  large  and  splen 
did  open-air  representations  of  these  great  Greek 
dramas  before  the  assembled  citizens  of  a  Greek 
state,  and  the  cramped  and  dingy  performances  of 
Shakspere's  plays  in  the  rude  theatre  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  day,  when  the  stage  was  but  a  small 
platform  set  up  at  one  end  of  the  half-roofed  court 
yard  of  an  inn.  Then  there  was  but  a  handful  of 
spectators,  standing  thickly  in  the  pit  or  seated  in 
the  shallow  galleries  close  to  the  actors.  The 
stage  was  unencumbered  with  scenery,  and  author 
and  actors  felt  themselves  free  to  fill  it  with  move 
ment;  and  so  the  plays  of  that  time  abound  in 
murders  and  trials,  in  councils  and  in  battles.  The 
audience  had  perforce  to  imagine  the  background 
of  the  story,  and  so  the  authors  did  not  hesitate  to 
change  the  scene  with  careless  frequency.  As  the 
noble  marble  theatres  of  Greece  imposed  on  the 
dramatist  an  equal  severity,  so  the  mean,  half- 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


243 


timbered  playhouses  of  Elizabethan  England  war 
ranted  the  noisy  violence  and  the  rushing  eloquence 
and  the  fiery  poesy  which  seem  to  us  to-day  chief 
among  the  characteristics  of  the  dramatic  literature 
of  that  epoch. 

Crossing  the  Channel  to  France,  we  find  that 
the  decorum  and  pseudo-dignity  of  tragedy  under 
Louis  XIV.  are  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  court 
plumes  and  velvet  coats  which  the  actors  wore 
even  when  personating  the  noblest  of  Romans  or 
the  simplest  of  Greeks;  and  also  to  the  fact  that 
the  stage  was  circumscribed  by  a  double  row  of 
benches  occupied  by  the  courtiers.  Through  the 
ranks  of  these  fine  gentlemen,  coming  and  going 
at  their  will,  and  chatting  together  freely,  the  Cid 
and  Phedre  had  to  make  their  way  to  a  small  cen 
tral  space  where  they  might  stand  stock-still  to 
declaim.  Swift  motion  and  even  vigorous  gesture 
were  impossible.  The  wily  Racine  found  his  ac 
count  in  substituting  a  subtle  self-analytic  and  con 
centrated  psychologic  action  for  purely  physical 
movement,  a  choice  consonant  to  his  genius. 
On  the  production  of  Voltaire's  'Semiramis,' 
it  is  recorded  that  an  usher  had  to  break 
through  the  ring  of  spectators  seated  and  stand 
ing  on  the  stage,  with  a  plaintive  appeal  that 
they  would  make  way  for  the  ghost  of  Ninus. 
Under  conditions  like  these  it  is  no  wonder  that 


244 


PEN  AND  INK. 


in  time  French  tragedy  stiffened  into  a  parody 
of  itself. 

The  physical  conditions  of  the  stage  are  different 
in  every  time  and  in  every  place;  they  are  continu 
ally  changing;  but  the  true  dramatist  makes  his 
work  conform  to  them,  consciously  or  uncon 
sciously.  The  poet  who  is  not  a  true  dramatist 
seeks  to  model  a  modern  drama  on  an  ancient  — 
a  fundamental  and  fatal  defect.  The  attempt  of 
Voltaire  to  imitate  Sophocles  was  foredoomed  to 
failure.  The  endeavor  of  many  later  English  poets 
to  use  the  Shaksperian  formula  is  equally  futile. 
Mr.  Stedman  has  shrewdly  pointed  out  that 
Tennyson's  '  Queen  Mary '  differs  from  the  work 
of  the  Elizabethan  dramatist  in  that  it  is  the  result 
of  a  "forced  effort,  while  the  models  after  which 
it  is  shaped  were  in  their  day  an  intuitive  form  of 
expression." 

This  forced  effort  is  really  due  to  a  misunder 
standing  of  the  older  dramatists.  If  Sophocles  had 
lived  in  the  days  of  Voltaire,  he  would  have  writ 
ten  in  accordance  with  the  physical  conditions  of 
the  French  theatre  of  that  era.  If  Shakspere  had 
lived  in  the  days  of  /Eschylus,  he  would  have  pro 
duced  Greek  plays  of  the  most  sublime  simplicity. 
Were  he  alive  now,  we  may  be  sure  that  he  would 
not  construct  a  piece  in  mimicry  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  as  Lord  Tennyson  chose  to  do.  He 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


245 


would  use  the  most  modern  form:  and,  incom 
parable  craftsman  as  he  was,  he  would  bend  to 
his  bidding  every  modern  improvement  —  music, 
costume,  scenery,  and  lighting.  Were  Caesar  and 
Napoleon  men  of  our  time,  they  would  not  now 
fight  with  the  short  sword  or  the  flint-lock,  but 
with  the  Winchester  and  the  Gatling. 

This,  I  take  it,  is  one  of  the  chief  characteristics 
of  the  true  dramatist  —  that  he  sees  at  once  when 
a  form  is  outworn,  and  lets  the  dead  past  bury  its 
dead ;  that  he  utilizes  all  the  latest  devices  of  the 
stage,  while  recognizing  frankly  and  fully  the 
limitations  imposed  by  the  physical  conditions  of 
the  theatre.  As  I  have  already  suggested,  these 
limitations  forbid  not  a  few  of  the  effects  permissi 
ble  to  the  novelist  No  dramatist  may  open  his 
story  with  a  solitary  horseman,  as  was  once  the 
fashion  of  fiction ;  nor  can  he  show  the  hero  casu 
ally  rescuing  the  heroine  from  a  prairie  on  fire,  or 
from  a  slip  into  the  rapids  of  Niagara;  and  he  finds 
it  impossible  to  get  rid  of  the  villain  by  throwing 
him  under  the  wheels  of  a  locomotive.  Not  only 
is  the  utilization  of  the  forces  of  nature  very  diffi 
cult  on  the  stage,  and  extremely  doubtful,  but  the 
description  of  nature  herself  is  out  of  place;  and 
however  expert  the  scene-painter,  he  cannot  hope 
to  vie  with  Victor  Hugo  or  Hawthorne  in  calling 
up  before  the  eye  the  grandeur  or  the  picturesque- 


246  PEN  AND  INK. 

ness  of  the  scene  where  the  action  of  the  story 
comes  to  its  climax. 

Time  was  when  the  drama  was  first,  and  prose- 
fiction  limped  a  long  way  after;  time  was  when 
the  novelists,  even  the  greatest  of  them,  began  as 
playwrights.  Cervantes,  Le  Sage,  Fielding,  all 
studied  the  art  of  character-drawing  on  the  boards 
of  a  theatre,  although  no  one  of  their  plays  keeps 
the  stage  to-day,  while  we  still  read  with  undi- 
minished  zest  the  humorous  record  of  the  adven 
tures  and  misadventures  of  Don  Quixote,  Gil  Bias, 
and  Tom  Jones.  Scott  was,  perhaps,  the  first  great 
novelist  who  did  not  learn  his  trade  behind  the 
scenes.  It  seemed  to  Lowell  that  before  Fielding 
"real  life  formed  rather  the  scenic  background 
than  the  substance,  and  that  the  characters  are, 
after  all,  merely  players  who  represent  certain 
types  rather  than  the  living  types  themselves." 
It  may  be  suggested  that  the  earlier  novels  reflected 
the  easy  expedients  and  artificial  manners  of  the 
theatre,  much  as  the  writers  may  have  employed 
the  processes  of  the  stage.  Since  Fielding  and 
Scott  the  novel  has  been  expanding,  until  it  seeks 
to  overshadow  its  elder  brother.  The  old  inter 
dependence  of  the  drama  and  prose-fiction  has 
ceased;  nowadays  the  novel  and  the  play  are 
independent,  each  with  its  own  aims  and  its  own 
methods. 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS. 


247 


While,  on  the  one  hand,  there  are  not  lacking 
those  who  see  in  the  modern  novel  but  a  bastard 
epic  in  low  prose,  so  there  are  not  wanting  others, 
novelists  and  critics  of  literature,  chiefly  in  France, 
where  the  principles  of  dramatic  art  are  better 
understood  than  elsewhere,  who  are  so  impressed 
by  the  number  and  magnitude  of  the  restrictions 
which  bind  the  dramatist  that  they  are  inclined 
to  declare  the  drama  itself  to  be  an  outworn  form. 
They  think  that  the  limitations  imposed  on  the 
dramatist  are  so  rigid  that  first-rate  literary  work 
men  will  not  accept  them,  and  that  first-rate 
literary  work  cannot  be  hoped  for.  These  critics 
are  on  the  verge  of  hinting  that  nowadays  the 
drama  is  little  more  than  a  polite  amusement,  just 
as  others  might  call  oratory  now  little  more  than 
the  art  of  making  after-dinner  speeches.  They 
suggest  that  the  play  is  sadly  primitive  when 
compared  with  the  perfected  novel  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  They  remark  that  the  drama  can 
show  but  a  corner  of  life,  while  prose-fiction  may 
reveal  almost  the  whole  of  it.  They  assert  boldly 
that  the  drama  is  no  longer  the  form  of  literature 
best  suited  to  the  treatment  of  the  subjects  in 
which  the  thinking  people  of  to-day  are  interested. 
They  declare  that  the  novelist  may  grapple  reso 
lutely  with  a  topic  of  the  times,  though  the  drama 
tist  dare  not  scorch  his  fingers  with  a  burning 


248  PEN  AND  INK. 

question.  The  Goncourts,  in  the  preface  of  their 
undramatic  play,  '  La  Patrie  en  Danger,'  announced 
that  "the  drama  of  to-day  is  not  literature." 

It  is  well  to  mass  these  criticisms  together  that 
they  may  be  met  once  and  for  all.  It  is  true  that 
the  taste  for  analysis  which  dominates  the  prose- 
fiction  of  our  time  has  affected  the  drama  but 
little;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  say  whether  or  not 
the  formulas  of  the  theatre  can  be  so  enlarged, 
modified,  and  made  more  delicate  that  the  drama 
tist  can  really  rival  the  novelist  in  psychologic 
subtlety.  Of  course,  if  the  novel  continues  to 
develop  in  one  direction  in  accordance  with  a 
general  current  of  literature,  and  if  the  drama  does 
not  develop  along  the  same  lines,  then  the  drama 
will  be  left  behind,  and  it  will  become  a  mere 
sport,  an  empty  spectacle,  a  toy  for  children, 
spoon-meat  for  babes. 

A  book,  however  fine  or  peculiar,  delicate  or 
spiritual,  goes  in  time  to  the  hundred  or  the  thou 
sand  congenial  spirits  for  whom  it  was  intended; 
it  may  not  get  to  its  address  at  once  or  even  in  its 
author's  lifetime;  but  sooner  or  later  its  message 
is  delivered  to  all  who  are  ready  to  receive  it.  A 
play  can  have  no  such  fate;  and  for  it  there  is 
no  redemption,  if  once  it  is  damned.  It  cannot 
live  by  pleasing  a  few  only;  to  earn  the  right  to 
exist,  it  must  please  the  many.  And  this  is  at 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS.  349 

the  bottom  of  all  dislike  for  the  dramatic  form  — 
that  it  appeals  to  the  crowd,  to  the  broad  public, 
to  all  classes  alike,  rich  and  poor,  learned  and 
ignorant,  rough  and  refined.  And  this  is  to  me 
the  great  merit  of  the  drama,  that  it  cannot  be 
dilettante,  finikin,  precious,  narrow.  It  must 
handle  broad  themes  broadly.  It  must  deal  with 
the  common  facts  of  humanity.  It  is  the  democrat 
of  literature.  Theophile  Gautier,  who  disliked  the 
theatre,  said  that  an  idea  never  found  its  way  on 
the  stage  until  it  was  worn  threadbare  in  news 
papers  and  in  novels.  And  he  was  not  far  out. 
As  the  drama  appeals  to  the  public  at  large,  it 
must  consider  seriously  only  those  subjects  which 
the  public  at  large  can  understand  and  are  inter 
ested  in.  There  are  exceptions,  no  doubt,  now 
and  again,  when  an  adroit  dramatist  succeeds  in 
captivating  the  public  with  a  theme  still  in  de 
bate.  M.  Sardou,  for  example,  wrote  'Daniel  Ro- 
chat '  ten  years  before  Mrs.  Ward  wrote  '  Robert 
Elsmere,'  and  the  Frenchman's  play  was  acted  in 
New  York  for  more  than  a  hundred  nights.  M. 
Alexandre  Dumas  fits  has  again  and  again  dis 
cussed  on  the  stage  marriage  and  divorce  and 
other  problems  that  vex  mankind  to-day.  And 
in  Scandinavia,  Henrik  Ibsen,  a  dramatist  of  ex 
ceeding  technical  skill  and  abundant  ethical  vigor, 
has  brought  out  a  series  of  dramas  (many  of  them 


250 


PEN  AND  INK. 


successful  on  the  stage),  of  which  the  most  im 
portant  is  'Ghosts,'  wherein  he  considers  with 
awful  moral  force  the  doctrine  of  heredity,  proving 
by  example  that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited 
on  the  children.  With  instances  like  these  in  our 
memories,  we  may  suggest  that  the  literary  defi 
ciencies  of  the  drama  are  not  in  the  form,  but  in 
the  inexpertness  or  inertness  of  the  dramatists  of 
the  day.  There  are  few  of  the  corner-stone  facts 
of  human  life,  and  there  are  none  of  the  crucible- 
tried  passions  of  human  character,  which  the 
drama  cannot  discuss  quite  as  well  as  the  novel. 
Indeed,  the  drama  is  really  the  noblest  form  of 
literature,  because  it  is  the  most  direct.  It  calls 
forth  the  highest  of  literary  faculties  in  the  highest 
degree  —  the  creation  of  character,  standing  firm 
on  its  own  feet,  and  speaking  for  itself.  The  per 
son  in  a  play  must  be  and  do,  and  the  spectator 
must  see  what  he  is,  and  what  he  does,  and  why. 
There  is  no  narrator  standing  by  to  act  as  chorus, 
and  there  needs  none.  If  the  dramatist  know  his 
trade,  if  he  have  the  gift  of  the  born  playwright, 
if  his  play  is  well  made,  then  there  is  no  call  for 
explanation  or  analysis,  no  necessity  of  dissecting 
or  refining,  no  demand  for  comment  or  sermon, 
no  desire  that  any  one  palliate  or  denounce  what 
all  have  seen.  Actions  speak  louder  than  words. 
That  this  direct  dramatic  method  is  fine  enough 


THE  DRAMATIZATION  OF  NOVELS.  25! 

for  the  most  abstruse  intellectual  self-questioning 
when  the  subject  calls  for  this,  and  that  in  the 
mighty  hand  of  genius  it  is  capable  of  throwing 
light  in  the  darkest  corners  and  crannies  of  the 
tortured  and  tortuous  human  soul,  ought  not  to 
be  denied  by  any  one  who  may  have  seen  on  the 
stage  the  'CEdipus'  of  Sophocles,  the  'Hamlet' 
of  Shakspere,  the  'Misanthrope'  of  Moliere,  or  the 
'  Faust '  of  Goethe. 
(1889) 


X 

THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS. 


OUBTLESS  criticism  was  originally  be 
nignant,  pointing  out  the  beauties 
of  a  work  rather  than  its  defects. 
The  passions  of  man  have  made  it 
malignant,  as  the  bad  heart  of  Pro 
crustes  turned  the  bed,  the  symbol  of  repose,  into 
an  instrument  of  torture."  So  wrote  Longfellow 
a-many  years  ago,  thinking,  it  maybe,  on  'English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,'  or  on  the  Jedburgh 
justice  of  Jeffrey.  But  we  may  question  whether 
the  poet  did  not  unduly  idealize  the  past,  as  is  the 
custom  of  poets,  and  whether  he  did  not  unfairly 
asperse  the  present.  With  the  general  softening 
of  manners,  no  doubt  those  of  the  critic  have 
improved  also.  Surely,  since  a  time  whereof  the 
memory  of  man  runneth  not  to  the  contrary,  "to 
criticise,"  in  the  ears  of  many,  if  not  of  most,  has 
been  synonymous  with  "to  find  fault."  In  Far- 
quhar's  'Inconstant,'  now  nearly  two  hundred 
years  old,  Petit  says  of  a  certain  lady:  "She's  a 

*55 


256  PEN  AND  INK. 

critic,  sir;  she  hates  a  jest,  for  fear  it  should  please 
her." 

The  critics  themselves  are  to  blame  for  this  mis 
apprehension  of  their  attitude.  When  Mr.  Arthur 
Pendennis  wrote  reviews  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
he  settled  the  poet's  claims  as  though  he  ' '  were  my 
lord  on  the  bench,  and  the  author  a  miserable  little 
suitor  trembling  before  him."  The  critic  of  this 
sort  acts  not  only  as  jury  and  judge,  first  finding 
the  author  guilty  and  then  putting  on  the  black 
cap  to  sentence  him  to  the  gallows,  but  he  often 
volunteers  as  executioner  also,  laying  on  a  round 
dozen  lashes  with  his  own  hand  and  with  a  hearty 
good  will.  We  are  told,  for  example,  that  Cap 
tain  Shandon  knew  the  crack  of  Warrington's 
whip  and  the  cut  his  thong  left.  Bludyer  went 
to  work  like  a  butcher  and  mangled  his  subject, 
but  Warrington  finished  a  man,  laying  "  his  cuts 
neat  and  regular,  straight  down  the  back,  and 
drawing  blood  every  time." 

Whenever  I  recall  this  picture  I  understand  the 
protest  of  one  of  the  most  acute  and  subtle  of 
American  critics,  who  told  me  that  he  did  not 
much  mind  what  was  said  about  his  articles  so 
long  as  they  were  not  called  "trenchant."  Per 
haps  trenchant  is  the  adjective  which  best  defines 
what  true  criticism  is  not.  True  criticism,  so  Jou- 
bert  tells  us,  is  un  exercice  mtthodique  de  discerne- 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS. 


257 


ment.  It  is  an  effort  to  understand  and  to  explain. 
The  true  critic  is  no  more  an  executioner  than  he 
is  an  assassin ;  he  is  rather  a  seer,  sent  forward  to 
spy  out  the  land,  and  most  useful  when  he  comes 
back  bringing  a  good  report  and  bearing  a  full 
cluster  of  grapes. 

La  critique  sans  bonU  trouble  le  gout  et  empoi- 
sonne  les  saveurs,  said  Joubert  again;  unkindly 
criticism  disturbs  the  taste  and  poisons  the  savor. 
No  one  of  the  great  critics  was  unkindly.  That 
Macaulay  mercilessly  flayed  Montgomery  is  evi 
dence,  were  any  needed,  that  Macaulay  was  not 
one  of  the  great  critics.  The  tomahawk  and  the 
scalping-knife  are  not  the  critical  apparatus,  and 
they  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  armory  of  Lessing 
and  of  Sainte-Beuve,  of  Matthew  Arnold  and  of 
James  Russell  Lowell.  It  is  only  incidentally 
that  these  devout  students  of  letters  find  fault. 
Though  they  may  ban  now  and  again,  they  came 
to  bless.  They  chose  their  subjects,  for  the  most 
part,  because  they  loved  these,  and  were  eager  to 
praise  them  and  to  make  plain  to  the  world  the 
reasons  for  their  ardent  affection.  Whenever  they 
might  chance  to  see  incompetence  and  pretension 
pushing  to  the  front,  they  shrugged  their  shoul 
ders  more  often  than  not,  and  passed  by  on  the 
other  side  silently ;  and  so  best.  Very  rarely  did 
they  cross  over  to  expose  an  impostor. 


258  PEN  AND  INK. 

Lessing  waged  war  upon  theories  of  art,  but  he 
kept  up  no  fight  with  individual  authors.  Sainte- 
Beuve  sought  to  paint  the  portrait  of  the  man  as 
he  was,  warts  and  all;  but  he  did  not  care  for  a 
sitter  who  was  not  worth  the  most  loving  art. 
Matthew  Arnold  was  swift  to  find  the  joints  in 
his  opponent's  armor;  but  there  is  hardly  one  of 
his  essays  in  criticism  which  had  not  its  exciting 
cause  in  his  admiration  for  its  subject.  Lowell 
has  not  always  hidden  his  scorn  of  a  sham,  and 
sometimes  he  has  scourged  it  with  a  single  sharp 
phrase.  Generally,  however,  even  the  humbugs 
get  off  scot-free,  for  the  true  critic  knows  that 
Time  will  attend  to  these  fellows,  and  there  is 
rarely  any  need  to  lend  a  hand.  It  was  Bentley 
who  said  that  no  man  was  ever  written  down 
save  by  himself. 

The  late  Edmond  Scherer  once  handled  M. 
£mile  Zola  without  gloves:  and  M.  Jules  Lemaitre 
has  made  M.  Georges  Ohnet  the  target  of  his 
flashing  wit.  But  each  of  these  attacks  attained 
notoriety  from  its  unexpectedness.  And  what 
has  been  gained  in  either  case  ?  Since  Scherer  fell 
foul  of  him,  M.  Zola  has  written  his  strongest 
novel,  '  Germinal '  (one  01  the  most  powerful  tales 
of  this  century),  and  his  rankest  story,  '  La  Terre ' 
(one  of  the  most  offensive  fictions  in  all  the  history 
of  literature).  M.  Lemaitre's  brilliant  assault  on 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS. 


259 


M.  Ohnet  may  well  have  excited  pity  for  the 
wretched  victim;  and,  damaging  as  it  was,  I 
doubt  if  its  effect  is  as  fatal  as  the  gentler  and 
more  humorous  criticism  of  M.  Anatole  France,  in 
which  the  reader  sees  contempt  slowly  gaining  the 
mastery  over  the  honest  critic's  kindliness. 

For  all  that  he  was  a  little  prim  in  taste  and  a 
little  arid  in  manner,  Scherer  had  the  gift  of  appre 
ciation —  the  most  precious  possession  of  any 
critic.  M.  Lemaitre,  despite  his  frank  enjoyment 
of  his  own  skill  in  fence,  has  a  faculty  of  hearty 
admiration.  There  are  thirteen  studies  in  the  first 
series  of  his  '  Contemporains,'  and  the  dissection 
of  the  unfortunate  M.  Ohnet  is  the  only  one  in 
which  the  critic  does  not  handle  his  scalpel  with 
loving  care.  To  run  amuck  through  the  throng 
of  one's  fellow-craftsmen  is  not  a  sign  of  sanity  — 
on  the  contrary.  Depreciation  is  cheaper  than 
appreciation;  and  criticism  which  is  merely  de 
structive  is  essentially  inferior  to  criticism  which 
is  constructive.  That  he  saw  so  little  to  praise  is 
greatly  against  Poe's  claim  to  be  taken  seriously  as 
a  critic;  so  is  his  violence  of  speech;  and  so  also 
is  the  fact  that  those  whom  he  lauded  might  be  as 
little  deserving  of  his  eulogy  as  those  whom  he 
assailed  were  worthy  of  his  condemnation.  The 
habit  of  intemperate  attack  which  grew  on  Poe  is 
foreign  to  the  serene  calm  of  the  higher  criticism. 


260  PEN  AND  INK. 

F.  D.  Maurice  made  the  shrewd  remark  that  the 
critics  who  take  pleasure  in  cutting  up  mean  books 
soon  deteriorate  themselves  —  subdued  to  that 
they  work  in.  It  may  be  needful,  once  in  a  way, 
to  nail  vermin  to  the  barn  door  as  a  warning,  and 
thus  we  may  seek  a  reason  for  Macaulay's  cruel 
treatment  of  Montgomery,  and  M.  Lemaitre's  piti 
less  castigation  of  M.  Ohnet.  But  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten,  or  rather  in  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hun 
dred,  the  attitude  of  the  critic  toward  contempo 
rary  trash  had  best  be  one  of  absolute  indifference, 
sure  that  Time  will  sift  out  what  is  good,  and  that 
Time  winnows  with  unerring  taste. 

The  duty  of  the  critic,  therefore,  is  to  help  the 
reader  to  "get  the  best,"  —  in  the  old  phrase  of 
the  dictionary-venders, —  to  choose  it,  to  under 
stand  it,  to  enjoy  it.  To  choose  it,  first  of  all; 
so  must  the  critic  dwell  with  delighted  insistence 
upon  the  best  books,  drawing  attention  afresh  to 
the  old  and  discovering  the  new  with  alert  vi 
sion.  Neglect  is  the  proper  portion  of  the  worth 
less  books  of  the  hour,  whatever  may  be  their 
vogue  for  the  week  or  the  month.  It  cannot  be 
declared  too  frequently  that  temporary  popularity 
is  no  sure  test  of  real  merit;  else  were  '  Proverbial 
Philosophy,'  the  'Light  of  Asia,'  and  the  'Epic 
of  Hades '  the  foremost  British  poems  since  the 
decline  of  Robert  Montgomery;  else  were  the 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS.  26 1 

'  Lamplighter '  (does  any  one  read  the  '  Lamp 
lighter'  nowadays,  I  wonder?),  'Looking  Back 
ward,'  and  'Mr.  Barnes  of  New  York  '  the  typical 
American  novels.  No  one  can  insist  too  often  on 
the  distinction  between  what  is  "good  enough  " 
for  current  consumption  by  a  careless  public,  and 
what  is  really  good,  permanent,  and  secure.  No 
one  can  declare  with  too  much  emphasis  the  dif 
ference  between  what  is  literature  and  what  is 
not  literature,  nor  the  width  of  the  gulf  which 
separates  them.  A  critic  who  has  not  an  eye 
single  to  this  distinction  fails  of  his  duty.  Perhaps 
the  best  way  to  make  the  distinction  plain  to  the 
reader  is  to  persist  in  discussing  what  is  vital  and 
enduring,  pointedly  passing  over  what  may  happen 
to  be  accidentally  popular. 

Yet  the  critic  mischooses  who  should  shut  him 
self  up  with  the  classics  of  all  languages  and  in 
rapt  contemplation  of  their  beauties  be  blind  to 
the  best  work  of  his  own  time.  If  criticism  itself 
is  to  be  seen  of  men,  it  must  enter  the  arena  and 
bear  a  hand  in  the  combat.  The  books  which 
have  come  down  to  us  from  our  fathers  and  from 
our  grandfathers  area  blessed  heritage,  no  doubt; 
but  there  are  a  few  books  of  like  value  to  be  picked 
out  of  those  which  we  of  to-day  shall  pass  along 
to  our  children  and  to  our  grandchildren.  It  may 
be  even  that  some  of  our  children  are  beginning 


262  PEN  AND  INK. 

already  to  set  down  in  black  and  white  their  im 
pressions  of  life,  with  a  skill  and  with  a  truth 
which  shall  in  due  season  make  them  classics 
also.  Sainte-Beuve  asserted  that  the  real  triumph 
of  the  critic  was  when  the  poets  whose  praises 
he  had  sounded  and  for  whom  he  had  fought 
grew  in  stature  and  surpassed  themselves,  keep 
ing,  and  more  than  keeping,  the  magnificent  prom 
ises  which  the  critic,  as  their  sponsor  in  baptism, 
had  made  for  them.  Besides  the  criticism  of  the 
classics,  grave,  learned,  definitive,  there  is  another 
more  alert,  said  Sainte-Beuve,  more  in  touch  with 
the  spirit  of  the  hour,  more  lightly  equipped,  it  may 
be,  and  yet  more  willing  to  find  answers  for  the 
questions  of  the  day.  This  more  vivacious  criti 
cism  chooses  its  heroes  and  encompasses  them 
about  with  its  affection,  using  boldly  the  words 
"genius"  and  "glory,"  however  much  this  may 
scandalize  the  lookers-on : 

Nous  tiendrons,  pour  lutter  dans  1'arene  lyrique, 
Toi  la  lance,  moi  les  coursiers. 

To  few  critics  is  it  given  to  prophesy  the  lyric 
supremacy  of  a  Victor  Hugo  —  it  was  in  a  review 
of  '  Les  Feuilles  d'Automne '  that  Sainte-Beuve 
made  this  declaration  of  principles.  A  critic  lack 
ing  the  insight  and  the  equipment  of  Sainte-Beuve 
may  unduly  despise  an  Ugly  Duckling,  or  he  may 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS.  263 

mistake  a  Goose  for  a  Swan,  only  to  wait  in  vain 
for  its  song.  Indeed,  to  set  out  of  malice  pre 
pense  to  discover  a  genius  is  but  a  wild-goose 
chase  at  best;  and  though  the  sport  is  pleasant 
for  those  who  follow,  it  may  be  fatal  to  the  chance 
fowl  who  is  expected  to  lay  a  golden  egg.  Long 
fellow's  assertion  that  "  critics  are  sentinels  in  the 
grand  army  of  letters,  stationed  at  the  corners  of 
newspapers  and  reviews  to  challenge  every  new 
author,"  may  not  be  altogether  acceptable,  but  it 
is  at  least  the  duty  of  the  soldier  to  make  sure  of 
the  papers  of  those  who  seek  to  enlist  in  the 
garrison. 

"  British  criticism  has  always  been  more  or  less 
parochial,"  said  Lowell,  many  years  ago,  before 
he  had  been  American  Minister  at  St.  James's.  "It 
cannot  quite  persuade  itself  that  truth  is  of  immor 
tal  essence,  totally  independent  of  all  assistance 
from  quarterly  journals  or  the  British  army  and 
navy."  No  doubt  there  has  been  a  decided  im 
provement  in  the  temper  of  British  criticism  since 
this  was  written ;  it  is  less  parochial  than  it  was, 
and  it  is  perhaps  now  one  of  its  faults  that  it  af 
fects  a  cosmopolitanism  to  which  it  does  not  attain. 
But  even  now  an  American  of  literary  taste  is 
simply  staggered— there  is  no  other  word  for  it— 
whenever  he  reads  the  weekly  reviews  of  contem 
porary  fiction  in  the  Atbenceum,  the  Academy,  the 


264  PEN  AND  INK- 

Spectator,  and  the  Saturday  Review,  and  when  he 
sees  high  praise  bestowed  on  novels  so  poor  that 
no  American  pirate  imperils  his  salvation  to  reprint 
them.  The  encomiums  bestowed,  for  example, 
upon  such  tales  as  those  which  are  written  by  the 
ladies  who  call  themselves  "Rita,"  and  "The 
Duchess  "  and  "The  Authoress  of  'The  House 
on  the  Marsh,'  "  seem  hopelessly  uncritical.  The 
writers  of  most  of  these  reviews  are  sadly  lacking 
in  literary  perception  and  in  literary  perspective. 
The  readers  of  these  reviews  —  if  they  had  no 
other  sources  of  information  —  would  never  sus 
pect  that  the  novel  of  England  is  no  longer  what 
it  was  once,  and  that  it  is  now  inferior  in  art  to  the 
novel  of  France,  of  Spain,  and  of  America.  If  the 
petty  minnows  are  magnified  thus,  what  lens  will 
serve  fitly  to  reproduce  the  lordly  salmon  or  the 
stalwart  tarpon  ?  Those  who  praise  the  second- 
rate  or  the  tenth-rate  in  terms  appropriate  only  to 
the  first-rate  are  derelict  to  the  first  duty  of  the 
critic  —  which  is  to  help  the  reader  to  choose  the 
best. 

And  the  second  duty  of  the  critic  is  like  unto 
the  first.  It  is  to  help  the  reader  to  understand 
the  best.  There  is  many  a  book  which  needs  to 
be  made  plain  to  him  who  runs  as  he  reads,  and 
it  is  the  running  reader  of  these  hurried  years  that 
the  critic  must  needs  address.  There  are  not  a 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS.  265 

few  works  of  high  merit  (although  none,  perhaps, 
of  the  very  highest)  which  gain  by  being  explained, 
even  as  Philip  expounded  Esaias  to  the  eunuch  of 
Candace,  Queen  of  the  Ethiopians,  getting  up  into 
his  chariot  and  guiding  him.  Perhaps  it  is  para 
doxical  to  suggest  that  a  book  of  the  very  highest 
class  is  perforce  clear  beyond  all  need  of  com 
mentary  or  exposition;  but  it  is  indisputable  that 
familiarity  may  blur  the  outline  and  use  may  wear 
away  the  sharp  edges,  until  we  no  longer  see  the 
masterpiece  as  distinctly  as  we  might,  nor  do  we 
regard  it  with  the  same  interest.  Here  again  the 
critic  finds  his  opportunity;  he  may  show  the  pe 
rennial  freshness  of  that  which  seemed  for  a  while 
withered ;  and  he  may  interpret  again  the  meaning 
of  the  message  an  old  book  may  bring  to  a  new 
generation.  Sometimes  this  message  is  valuable 
and  yet  invisible  from  the  outside,  like  the  political 
pamphlets  which  were  smuggled  into  the  France 
of  the  Second  Empire  concealed  in  the  hollow 
plaster  busts  of  Napoleon  III.,  but  ready  to  the 
hand  that  knew  how  to  extract  them  adroitly  at 
the  proper  time. 

The  third  duty  of  the  critic,  after  aiding  the 
reader  to  choose  the  best  and  to  understand  it,  is 
to  help  him  to  enjoy  it.  This  is  possible  only 
when  the  critic's  own  enjoyment  is  acute  enough 
to  be  contagious.  However  well  informed  a  critic 


266  PEN  AND  INK. 

may  be,  and  however  keen  he  may  be,  if  he  be 
not  capable  of  the  cordial  admiration  which  warms 
the  heart,  his  criticism  is  wanting.  A  critic  whose 
enthusiasm  is  not  catching  lacks  the  power  of  dis 
seminating  his  opinions.  His  judgment  may  be 
excellent,  but  his  influence  remains  negative. 
One  torch  may  light  many  a  fire ;  and  how  far  a 
little  candle  throws  its  beams !  Perhaps  the  ability 
to  take  an  intense  delight  in  another  man's  work, 
and  the  willingness  to  express  this  delight  frankly 
and  fully,  are  two  of  the  characteristics  of  the  true 
critic;  of  a  certainty  they  are  the  characteristics 
most  frequently  absent  in  the  criticaster.  Con 
sider  how  Sainte-Beuve  and  Matthew  Arnold  and 
Lowell  have  sung  the  praises  of  those  whose  poems 
delighted  them.  Note  how  Mr.  Henry  James  and 
M.  Jules  Lemaitre  are  affected  by  the  talents  of 
Alphonse  Daudet  and  of  Guy  de  Maupassant. 

Having  done  his  duty  to  the  reader,  the  critic 
has  done  his  full  duty  to  the  author  also.  It  is  to 
the  people  at  large  that  the  critic  is  under  obliga 
tions,  not  to  any  individual.  As  he  cannot  take 
cognizance  of  a  work  of  art,  literary  or  dramatic, 
plastic  or  pictorial,  until  after  it  is  wholly  complete, 
his  opinion  can  be  of  little  benefit  to  the  author. 
A  work  of  art  is  finally  finished  when  it  comes 
before  the  public,  and  the  instances  are  very  few 
indeed  when  an  author  has  ever  thought  it  worth 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS.  267 

while  to  modify  the  form  in  which  it  was  first  pre 
sented  to  the  world.  A  work  of  science,  on  the  other 
hand,  depending  partly  on  the  exactness  of  the 
facts  which  it  sets  forth  and  on  which  it  is  founded, 
may  gain  from  the  suggested  emendations  of  a 
critic.  Many  a  history,  many  a  law-book,  many 
a  scientific  treatise,  has  been  bettered  in  successive 
editions  by  hints  gleaned  here  and  there  from  the 
reviews  of  experts. 

But  the  work  of  art  stands  on  a  wholly  different 
footing  from  the  work  of  science;  and  the  critics 
have  no  further  duty  toward  the  author,  except, 
of  course,  to  treat  him  fairly,  and  to  present  him 
to  the  public  if  they  deem  him  worthy  of  this 
honor.  The  novel  or  the  poem  being  done  once 
for  all,  it  is  hardly  possible  for  critics  to  be  of  any 
use  to  the  novelist  or  to  the  poet  personally.  The 
artist  of  experience  makes  up  his  mind  to  this, 
and  accepts  criticism  as  something  which  has 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  his  work,  but  which 
may  materially  affect  his  position  before  the  public. 
Thackeray,  who  understood  the  feelings  and  the 
failings  of  the  literary  man  as  no  one  else,  has 
shown  us  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis  reading  the  news 
paper  notices  of  his  novel,  'Walter  Lorraine,'  and 
sending  them  home  to  his  mother.  "Their  cen 
sure  did  not  much  affect  him ;  for  the  good-natured 
young  man  was  disposed  to  accept  with  consid- 


268  PEN  AND  INK. 

arable  humility  the  dispraise  of  others.  Nor  did 
their  praise  elate  him  overmuch;  for,  like  most 
honest  persons,  he  had  his  own  opinion  about  his 
own  performance,  and  when  a  critic  praised  him 
in  the  wrong  place  he  was  hurt  rather  than  pleased 
by  the  compliment." 

Mr  James  tells  us  that  the  author  of  '  Smoke ' 
and  'Fathers  and  Sons,'  a  far  greater  novelist  than 
the  author  of  'Walter  Lorraine,'  had  a  serene 
indifference  toward  criticism.  Turgenef  gave 
Mr.  James  "the  impression  of  thinking  of  criti 
cism  as  most  serious  workers  think  of  it — that  it 
is  the  amusement,  the  exercise,  the  subsistence 
of  the  critic  (and,  so  far  as  this  goes,  of  immense 
use),  but  that,  though  it  may  often  concern  other 
readers,  it  does  not  much  concern  the  artist  him 
self."  Though  criticism  is  of  little  use  to  the 
author  directly,  it  can  be  of  immense  service  to 
him  indirectly,  if  it  be  exposition  rather  than  com 
ment;  not  a  bald  and  barren  attempt  at  classifica 
tion,  but  a  sympathetic  interpretation.  At  bottom, 
sympathy  is  the  prime  requisite  of  the  critic;  and 
with  sympathy  come  appreciation,  penetration, 
revelation  —  such,  for  example,  as  the  American 
novelist  has  shown  in  his  criticisms  of  the  Russian. 

There  is  one  kind  of  review  of  no  benefit  either 
to  the  author  or  to  the  public.  This  is  the  careless, 
perfunctory  book-notice,  penned  hastily  by  a  tired 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS.  269 

writer,  who  does  not  take  the  trouble  to  formulate 
his  opinion,  and  perhaps  not  even  to  form  one. 
Toward  the  end  of  1889  there  appeared  in  a  Brit 
ish  weekly  the  following  notice  of  a  volume  of 
American  short  stories : 

A  littery  gent  in  one  of  Mr.  [ ]'s  short  stories  says:  "A 

good  idea  for  a  short  story  is  a  shy  bird,  and  doesn't  come  for 
the  calling."  Alas!  alas!  it  is  true.  The  French  can  call  a 
great  deal  better  than  we  can;  but  the  Americans,  it  would 

seem,  cannot.     The  best  of  Mr.  [ ]'s  stories  is  the  first, 

about  a  tree  which  grew  out  of  the  bosom  of  a  buried  suicide, 
and  behaved  accordingly  to  his  descendants;  but,  so  far  from 
being  a  short  story,  it  is  a  long  one,  extending  over  some  hun 
dreds  of  years,  and  it  suffers  from  the  compression  which  Mr. 
[ ]  puts  upon  it.  It  deserves  to  have  a  volume  to  itself. 

Refraining  from  all  remark  upon  the  style  in 
which  this  paragraph  is  written  or  upon  the  taste 
of  the  writer,  I  desire  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  it  is  not  what  it  purports  to  be.  It  is  not  a 
criticism  within  the  accepted  meaning  of  the  word. 
It  indicates  no  intellectual  effort  on  the  part  of  its 
writer  to  understand  the  author  of  the  book.  An 
author  would  need  to  be  superlatively  sensitive  who 
could  take  offense  at  this  paragraph,  and  an  author 
who  could  find  pleasure  in  it  would  have  to  be 
unspeakably  vain.  To  me  this  notice  seems  the 
absolute  negation  of  criticism  —  mere  words  with 
no  suggestion  of  a  thought  behind  them.  The 


PEN  AND  INK. 


man  who  dashed  this  off  robbed  the  author  of  a 
criticism  to  which  he  was  entitled  if  the  book  was 
worth  reviewing  at  all;  and  in  thus  shirking  his 
bounden  duty  he  also  cheated  the  proprietor  of  the 
paper  who  paid  him.  Empty  paragraphing  of  this 
offensive  character  is  commoner  now  than  it  was  a 
few  years  ago,  commoner  in  Great  Britain  than  in 
the  United  States,  and  commoner  in  anonymous 
articles  than  in  those  warranted  by  the  signature 
of  the  writer.  Probably  the  man  who  was  guilty 
of  this  innocuous  notice  would  have  been  ashamed 
to  put  his  name  to  it. 

If  a  book  is  so  empty  that  there  is  nothing  to 
say  about  it,  then  there  is  no  need  to  say  anything. 
It  is  related  that  when  a  dramatist,  who  was  read 
ing  a  play  before  the  Committee  of  the  Comedie 
Franchise,  rebuked  M.  Got  for  slumbering  peace 
fully  during  this  ceremony,  the  eminent  comedian 
answered  promptly,  "  Sleep,  monsieur,  is  also  an 
opinion."  If  a  book  puts  the  critic  to  sleep,  or 
so  benumbs  his  faculties  that  he  finds  himself 
speechless,  he  has  no  call  to  proceed  further  in 
the  matter.  Perhaps  the  author  may  take  heart 
of  grace  when  he  remembers  that  of  all  Shak- 
spere's  characters,  it  was  the  one  with  the  ass's 
head  who  had  an  exposition  of  sleep  come  upon 
him,  as  it  was  the  one  with  the  blackest  heart  who 
said  he  was  nothing  if  not  critical. 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS. 


271 


If  I  were  to  attempt  to  draw  up  Twelve  Good 
Rules  for  Reviewers,  I  should  begin  with : 

I.  Form  an  honest  opinion. 

II.  Express  it  honestly. 

III.  Don't  review  a  book  which  you'cannot  take 
seriously. 

IV.  Don't  review  a  book  with  which  you  are 
out  of  sympathy.     That  is  to  say,  put  yourself  in 
the  author's  place,  and  try  to  see  his  work  from 
his  point  of  view,  which  is  sure  to  be  a  coign  of 
vantage. 

V.  Stick  to  the  text.     Review  the  book  be 
fore  you,  and  not  the  book  some  other  author 
might  have  written;  obiter  dicta  are  as  value 
less  from  the  critic  as  from  the  judge.      Don't 
go  off  on  a  tangent.     And  also  don't  go  round 
in  a  circle.      Say  what  you   have  to  say,   and 
stop.     Don't  go  on  writing  about  and  about  the 
subject,  and  merely  weaving  garlands  of  flowers 
of  rhetoric. 

VI.  Beware  of  the  Sham  Sample,  as  Charles 
Reade  called  it.     Make  sure  that  the  specimen 
bricks  you  select  for  quotation  do  not  give  a  false 
impression  of  the  facade,  and  not  only  of  the  ele 
vation  merely,  but  of  the  perspective  also,  and  of 
the  ground-plan. 

VII.  In  reviewing  a  biography  or  a  history,  criti 
cise  the  book  before  you,  and  don't  write  a  parallel 


372  PEN  AND  INK. 

essay  for  which  the  volume  you  have  in  hand 
serves  only  as  a  peg. 

VIII.  In  reviewing  a  work  of  fiction,  don't  give 
away  the  plot.     In  the  eyes  of  the  novelist,  this 
is  the  unpardonable  sin.     And,  as  it  discounts  the 
pleasure  of  the  reader  also,  it  is  almost  equally  un 
kind  to  him. 

IX.  Don't  try  to  prove  every  successful  author 
a  plagiarist.     It  may  be  that  many  a  successful 
author  has  been  a  plagiarist,  but  no  author  ever 
succeeded  because  of  his  plagiary. 

X.  Don't  break  a  butterfly  on  a  wheel.    If  a  book 
is  not  worth  much,  it  is  not  worth  reviewing. 

XI.  Don't  review  a  book  as  an  east  wind  would 
review  an  apple-tree  —  so  it  was  once  said  Doug 
las  Jerrold  was  wont  to  do.     Of  what  profit  to 
any  one  is  mere  bitterness  and  vexation  of  spirit  ? 

XII.  Remember  that  the  critic's  duty  is  to  the 
reader  mainly,  and  that  it   is  to  guide  him  not 
only  to  what  is  good,  but  to  what  is  best.     Three 
parts  of  what  is  contemporary  must  be  temporary 
only. 

Having  in  the  past  now  and  again  fallen  from 
grace  myself  and  written  criticism,  I  know  that 
on  such  occasions  these  Twelve  Good  Rules  would 
have  been  exceedingly  helpful  to  me  had  I  then 
possessed  them;  therefore  I  offer  them  now  hope 
fully  to  my  fellow-critics.  But  I  find  myself  in  a 


THE  WHOLE  DUTY  OF  CRITICS. 


273 


state  of  humility  (to  which  few  critics  are  accus 
tomed),  and  I  doubt  how  far  my  good  advice  will 
be  heeded.  I  remember  that,  after  reporting  the 
speech  in  which  Poor  Richard's  maxims  were  all 
massed  together,  Franklin  tells  us  that  "thus  the 
old  gentleman  ended  his  harangue.  The  people 
heard  it  and  approved  the  doctrine;  and  imme 
diately  practised  the  contrary,  just  as  if  it  had  been 
a  common  sermon." 
(1890) 


AN  EPISTLE 

To  (Master  Grander  {Matthews,  writer,  on  tie  occasion  of  bis 
putting  fortb  a  booh  entitled  "  'Pen  and  Ink." 


New  London,  Conn.,  Sept.  10,  1888. 

Dear  Grander: 

I  have  known  ihee  long,  and  found 
Thee  wise  in  council,  and  of  judgment  sound; 
Steadfast  in  friendship,  sound  and  clear  in  witt 
And  more  in  virtues  than  may  here  be  writ. 
But  most  I  joy,  in  these  machine-made  days. 
To  see  thee  constant  in  a  craftsman's  ways; 
That  the  plain  tool  that  knew  thy  'prentice  hand 
Gathers  no  rust  upon  thy  writing-stand; 
That  no  Invention  saves  the  labor  due 
To  any  Task  that's  worth  the  going  through; 
That  now  when  butter  snubs  the  stranger  churn, 
Plain  pen  and  ink  still  serve  a  writer  s  turn. 
Though  I,  more  firmly  orthodox,  still  hold, 
In  dire  default  of  quills,  to  steel  or  gold, 
And  though  thy  pen  be  rubber — let  it  pass — 
A  breath  of  blemish  on  thy  soul's  clear  glass. 

971 


There  is  no  "writing  fluid  "  in  thy  pot, 
'But  honest  ink  ofnutgatt  brew,  God  wot! 
Thou  dost  not  an  eleftric  needle  ply 
And,  like  a  housewife  with  an  apple-pie, 
Prick  thy  fair  page  into  a  stencil-plate — 
Then  daub  with  lampblack  for  a  duplicate. 
Nor  thine  the  sloven  page  whereon  the  shirk 
With  the  rough  tool  attempts  the  finished  work, 
And  introduces  to  the  sight  of  men 
The  Valet  Pencil  for  the  Matter  Pen. 

Not  att  like  thee!  in  this  uneasy  age, 

When  more  by  trick  than  toil  we  earn  our  wage. 

Here  by  the  sea  a  gentle  poet  dwells, 

And  in  fair  leisure  weaves  bis  magic  Spells; 

And  yet  doth  dare  with  countenance  serene 

To  weave  them  on  a  tinkling  steel  machine. 

Where  an  impertinent  and  soulless  bell 

Rings,  at  each  finished  line,  a  jangling  hneU. 

The  muse  and  I,  we  love  him,  and  I  think 

She  MAY  forgive  his  slight  to  pen  and  ink, 

And  let  no  dull  mechanic  cam  or  cog 

The  lightsome  movement  of  his  metres  clog; 

But  oh!  I  grieve  to  see  his  fingers  toy 

With  this  base  slave  in  dalliance  close  and  coy, 

While  in  his  standisb  dries  the  atrid  Spring 

Where  hides  the  shyer  muse  that  loves  to  sing. 


Give  me  the  old-time  ink,  black,  flowing,  free, 
And  give,  oh,  give!  the  old  goose-quill  to  me 
The  goose-quill,  whispering  of  humility. 


-\ 


It  whispers  to  the  bard:  "Fly  not  too  bigb! 
You  flap  your  wings — remember,  so  could  I. 
I  cackled  in  my  lifetime,  it  is  true; 
'But yet  again  remember,  so  do  You. 
And  tbere  were  some  things  possible  to  me 
That  possible  to  you  will  never  be. 
I  stood  for  hours  on  one  columnar  leg, 
And,  if  my  sex  were  such,  could  lay  an  egg. 
Ob,  well  for  you,  if  you  could  thus  beget 
Material  for  your  morning  omelette; 
Or,  iftbings  came  to  such  a  defperate  pass, 
You  could  in  calm  contentment  nibble  grass! 
Conceited  bard  !  and  can  you  sink  to  rest 
Upon  the  feather-pillow  of  your  breast?" 

Hold,  my  dear  Grander,  to  your  pot  of  ink: 
The  muse  sits  poised  upon  that  fountain's  brink. 
eAnd  that  you  long  may  live  to  bold  a  pen 
I'll  breatbe  a  prayer; 

The  world  will  say  "Amen!" 

H.  C.  BUNNER. 


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